I'm not entirely sure (because it was our professor who had the initial contact over Twitter) if it was clear that it was for research even though our prof. said "two of my students" in his original tweet. Once he cleared that up, someone hirer up got back to us with an apology for whoever wrote to my prof. initially. Still pretty crappy, but I think the person from the initial contact wasn't representative of Google's attitude about it.
They contacted us later and were very conciliatory about the person who was a bit heavy-handed in his communications. They really haven't been aggressive beyond that one guy who probably didn't have the authority to speak for Google. I was worried at first too, but they are handling the situation a lo t better.