Agreed but if someone at your own company did it two years before you in the context of something that recent it’s stretching credibility to say you were one of the first.
I mean, I think second is still "one of the first?" And, no offense to this project, but I don't know of it being used in a real industrial setting, whereas AlphaChip was used in TPU.
However it's hard to see how being provably 2 years behind the first even in your own company in an incredibly hot area that people are doing tons of work in makes you suddenly second. By that logic I might still be in time to claim the silver for the 100m at the Paris olympics if I pop over there in the next 18 months or so.
I can see you created this account just to comment on this thread so I'm sure you have more inside information than I do given that I'm really not connected to this in any way. Enjoy your work at Google Research. I think you guys do cool stuff. It's a shame in my opinion that you choose to damage your credibility by making (and defending) such obviously false claims rather than concentrating on the genuinely innovative work you have done advancing the field.