I'm amazed to read that you don't think these things don't change the world. And more so that you don't think these things are political!
Agriculture is political. Land development is political. Resource extraction is political. Taxation is political.
As GP said:
> there are hidden, unstated political motives at work.
Those technologies do not require Google to be politically active in any way. Saying they are inherently political is like saying a supermarket is inherently political. Might be true in some technical sense, but practically most people are happy to call it a public good.
> happy to call it a public good
Some supermarkets cut prices in half in advance of Hurricane Florence that is expected to make landfall today.
Other supermarkets maximize profitability and eliminated sale prices and discounts in advance of the hurricane.
Some supermarkets have large, prominent displays of unhealthy foods. Others emphasize healthy alternatives.
Sometimes merchandising decisions are purely profit-maximizing, other times they're trying to do good for their community while simultaneously making a profit.
If even a supermarket is political, how do you expect internet giants to be somehow non-political?
Virtually everything that they do involves tradeoffs that some people like and others don't.
I don't accept that as a truism; most work is maintaining the historically unprecedented comfort that we enjoy as a society and I think that is meaningful.
Providing food is meaningful, providing shelter is meaningful, extracting raw resources is meaningful, taxation and welfare are meaningful, taxation and government services are meaningful. I could go io but that covers the basic point.
And since we are talking about a specific company, I don't even necessarily accept that the folk at Google are changing the world more than anyone else. I don't know anyone personally who's commented that 'wow Google has really changed my life' since the introduction of Gmail about 15 years ago. So, whatever they are doing it isn't very visible. Most of the improvement in the technological world is startups and the work of the circuit people.