Google is a significant contributor to ffmpeg by way of VP9/AV1/AV2. It's not like it's a gaping maw of open-source abuse, the company generally provides real value to the OSS ecosystem at an even lower level than ffmpeg (which is saying a lot, ffmpeg is pretty in-the-weeds already).
As to why they bother finding these bugs... it's because that's how Google does things. You don't wait for something to break or be exploited, you load your compiler up with santizers and go hunting for bugs.
Yeah this one is kind of trivial, but if the bug-finding infrastructure is already set up it would be even more stupid if Google just sat on it.
So to be clear, if Google doesn't include patches, you would rather they don't make bugs they find in software public so other people can fix them?
That is, you'd rather a world where Google either does know about a vulnerability and refuses to tell anyone, or just doesn't look for them at all, over a world where google looks for them and lets people know they exist, but doesn't submit their own fix for it.
Why do you want that world? Why do you want corporations to reduce the already meager amounts of work and resources they put into open source software even further?
As to why they bother finding these bugs... it's because that's how Google does things. You don't wait for something to break or be exploited, you load your compiler up with santizers and go hunting for bugs.
Yeah this one is kind of trivial, but if the bug-finding infrastructure is already set up it would be even more stupid if Google just sat on it.