The query was already published on Quora. I assume that Google did patch the issue. They were simply requesting that it not be posted in a public forum, resulting in the potential for denial of service attacks. It wouldn't have been a statistician making a fuss about their pretty graphs being ruined. The problem was the very real performance impact the queries were having on the service, as thousands of visitors copy/pasted from Quora to see for themselves.
This is why companies like Google have bounties for such things. "Please submit bugs and performance issues privately so we can patch them before you disclose the details publicly and hurt our services - we'll even pay you for your discretion!"
This is why companies like Google have bounties for such things. "Please submit bugs and performance issues privately so we can patch them before you disclose the details publicly and hurt our services - we'll even pay you for your discretion!"