At least when I worked at Google a couple years ago, you could indeed start political discussions. Communications are very open at Google, and employee activism

At least when I worked at Google a couple years ago, you could indeed start political discussions. Communications are very open at Google, and employee activism is quite visible. Political questions also come up in Q&A's, and some employees expect leadership to comment on societal issues/events. There has been some tightening in the past couple years, due to how loud it got in the last few years. But still quite open from my understanding. One sample consequence was that open derision of Republicans was fairly common at Google, from both individual contributors and managers.