[Spivak]

When the mission is make money within the existing institutional frameworks it's much easier to be apolitical and that seems to be the change here. But when your culture is explicitly "make the world better" you can't avoid getting mixed up in political issues.

How the devs felt about police for example likely affected the maps feature for reporting cops on the road. Same with Google Maps history at abortion clinics. The read on various news organizations definitely affected the choices for Google News partnerships. How you feel about government surveillance and "the deep state" likely affected how they built their messaging apps. Even down to the sign-up form where you're asked your name/sex. A conservative Google would have made very different decisions.

It's really hard to do anything non-trivial that doesn't end up brushing up against political issues de jour.