The Arab Spring was in full swing, and activists were using YouTube to show the world the government crackdowns that resulted. Moderators were instructed to leave such “newsworthy” videos up with a warning, even if they violated the content guidelines.
This seems related to the other front page article on google and geopolitics.
I don't expect Google to gather personal information for the government. However, I expect them to continue to adopt the political role of the mainstream media: furthering an agenda which is
* pro Israel,
* anti-China,
* anti-Russia,
* ambivalent towards Europe, and
* anti-racist (except when this racism is against Palestinians, Muslims living in Muslim countries, or Chinese living in China).
Like the media, I think the main role Google will play is by controlling how information is spread through youtube. Google already plays a political role by
* promoting certain political agendas directly,
* making a big show of not removing "Innocence of Muslims"
* while at the same time quietly censoring equivalent "anti-Semitic" videos in Europe (e.g. "Jews and Gun Control").
Apart from that, Google is a big part of the internet infrastructure, and so they naturally work with the government to keep this secure. I think this is the extent of their technical cooperation with the government. The political stuff they mainly do of their own accord because of the political views of their executives.
EDIT: Jared Cohen sounds like a guy they hired to further a fairly mainstream liberal/Jewish agenda (to spread openness and democracy around the world, especially Muslim countries) through very mundane means. However on occasion he decided to do a lot of crazy stuff like "regime change" of his own accord (see wikileaks stratfor emails), much against the desires of Google.
This seems related to the other front page article on google and geopolitics.