The most political most Googlers work gets is what to call variable names. We decided to not use master/slave, so we are A-OK now!
But seriously, I know a few roles have immense influence over peoples lives, but most of us just try to efficiently plumb data we don't see between black boxes we don't understand.
Just because you can't see where the data you're plumbing touches the world doesn't mean it doesn't have impact.
I work on one of the edges of those engineering efforts. On one side I see first hand how detached engineers at Google are from the things they build and on the other I see people's lives being defined by using those products / services. That impact is real and I think it's at a level that very few googlers respect because they're not lucky enough to be on an outside edge like me.
For profit companies should not choose sides. Google's only discussion of politics in the workplace should be on how to make their systems be as unbiased as possible.
The problem with statements like this is that not choosing sides is exactly as political as choosing sides. There is no such thing as ignoring politics — it's an essential part of the human experience, so any organization must grapple with it.
People who think everything is political are usually authoritarians. They believe in order for progress to be made, you have to force or coerce people into doing the right thing.
