"There is a difference between the people Google has employed to do the work and the corporate strategy behind the work. I have no doubt that the people you describe are truly passionate and dedicated."

Of course there is difference, but you haven't explained what evidence you have that this it the corporate strategy. I actually know the corporate strategy, and i'm stating for a fact it's not as self-interested as you think. You don't have to believe me of course, and I'm not crazy enough to claim google doesn't have interests, but you present it as a very cynical 100% self-interested thing and it's simply not.

"But you don't see Google funding advocacy groups for initiatives that don't have a corresponding corporate benefit."

???? I think you are confused about what google funds.

What is your source of info? Press releases? Have you considered that maybe they don't let press releases happen because they just want the org to succeed, rather than being cynical and self-interested and trying to get credit, and that's why you don't know about it?

I personally helped fund opening of of polling location data (IE getting states to let us tell us where people vote so we could help people find their polling places). https://votinginfoproject.org/ There are now other partners, but Google created it, and funded it, as a separate org.

This was done for no other reason that I felt this was data that should be open, and it was completely ridiculous that you needed to pay various providers (many many figures) in order to get data on telling people where to vote.

This project was entirely altruistic - people were often confused by the info they had, or forgot, or something else. I wanted to solve this problem. There was no money, ads, or anything involved.

My group also funds the software freedom law center, software freedom conservancy, osu labs, etc. Not just open source either.

We fund many millions of dollars to organizations because it's the right thing to do and the orgs are fighting for the right things. Policy does the same. Of course, they do some advocacy and lobbying. But not all or even most of it has any direct corporate benefit.

In DC alone, Google funds a lot of dc related homeless and other advocacy organizations. Do you think Google has designs on ads for homeless people?

So when you say "But you don't see Google funding advocacy groups for initiatives that don't have a corresponding corporate benefit.", it would be more correct to say You don't see. And by "You don't see", that's often because Google doesn't put out press about it, because that's not the point. That would be self interested on Google's part. The point is to help the org.