I don't think it really has to. I debate politics with people at work enough. I won't get into specifics too much but it's not uncommon to meet someone who has a controversial opinion. You talk with someone, find out why they believe what they believe, and then question a few things (mostly asking why they believe they believe - what lead them to their beliefs). It doesn't have to get heated - it can be a boring lecture to one another about why you believe what you believe. It only gets ugly when you do things that won't lead to change like: "No - you're dumb! You should think what I think!" Which I don't think people who are emotionally and socially competent would do that often...
That said - I don't think of people at Google (or other big companies) as being particularly emotionally or socially competent because they don't hire and train for that.
However, a lot of the commentary here has been around in-person interactions and not on an online forum.
In reality, political debating at workplace quickly becomes just ugly.
And for companies like Google it's also costly, because media adore leaked scandals in big corporations.