The conservative read of the story actually misses the more interesting possibility: that Google profits from us thinking it is a progressive political actor.

Google benefits when we conflate the concept of technological progress with the concept of progressive (in the U.S. sense of "liberal") politics. These are two different ideas, but the analogy works well because each does still imply, in the popular mind, some sense of forward movement over time.

Certainly the popular concept of the development of technology is still progressive. Screens get sharper. Devices get smaller and lighter. Connections get faster. If we don't interrupt these processes, they do seem to go one way.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the most common concept of progressive politics still contains an embedded idea of a historical trajectory, if on a relatively modest scale. That's why we can talk about the Supreme Court being on "the wrong side of history" with gay marriage. The trend seems to be toward greater acceptance of marginalized social groups, and (some people would say) toward greater social justice overall.

These two ideas share one very deep philosophical root -- a concept of progress that originated in scientific rationalism. But technological change is not necessarily politically progressive, as we define the latter term today. Many liberals are worried about the use of drones for surveillance and policing. The technology is drastic and fairly new, but very few people would argue that its newness makes it politically progressive at all. (It is more likely either a neutral tool or ethically suspect because of the powers it gives us.)

Technology companies like Google benefit when we conflate those two types of progressivism, the political and the technological. Consumer technology needs young people to adopt it, and the young often like to be associated with the political left. So do intellectuals. Tie technological advance to left-leaning politics and you have all of a sudden made the former more appealing to two large and vocal groups of people -- and, of course, given them a reason to feel an affinity for your company.

Think too about the kind of progressivism Chavez represents: Not only is he a hero of labor; he's also an icon of Mexican-American identity politics. Expression of identity is already a major part of the culture of social media. This is a form of progressive politics that sits easily alongside Google's corporate status (more easily than would, for instance, the politics of that other Chavez who has been in the news recently...) So does the type of liberalism implicated in, say, the project of mapping North Korea's prison camps.

If Google markets itself as an ideologically progressive corporation, it can play on this analogy between technological and political progress even when it introduces products that patently have zero progressive political implications. Sure, products like Search and Books (now) do have such a sheen, the result of their association with freedom of information, for instance. But is Google Shopping a politically progressive product? Is Google Finance? That would be like saying eBay or Quicken had liberatory potential.