He released the product with Google branding making it look extremely like an official Google project, and then it went viral and blindsided everyone who would have been involved in creating or approving this kind of tool internally.

If I released a tool personally that I hadn't told anyone at work about and put my company's logos all over it and it went insanely viral then I would expect an extremely uncomfortable conversation with my manager, his manager, HR, and at least one lawyer.