Title seems wrong, it sounds like Dragonfly is still undergoing active development, just with reduced data access (no more access to 265.com search data) but the article references ongoing development, even though some developers were removed. That doesn't sound like it's actually ended. And the title's quote of "Effectively Ended" seems only to be quoting itself, there's no one in the article the said those words.
Pichai's words to congress could easily be read to mean "we don't have a release date at this time" not that it wasn't still an active project.
The political battle against Pichai made a success. So now the public support can be tuned down and Google can move on to do the only thing they could do in their current situation: building tools for the chinese gov to enter the market. They'll probably do the same thing behind closed doors and without the public Google label on the final result. Maybe baidu will suddenly provide better search results or something.
That's how this world works, and it's not like they really have a choice in that matter.
I think Google does have choice, they could forego revenue when it's knowingly generated by efforts to censor and oppress people. "how this world works" absolutely includes people & companies that betray their ideals for money, but there are those that stick to their principals too [0],[1]
Pichai's words to congress could easily be read to mean "we don't have a release date at this time" not that it wasn't still an active project.