Expect Google to take a lot of crap over the next few weeks as the company has basically just popped their proverbial political cherry. What they've done is they've gone and set up their very own PAC, a PAC which is taking the first step to courting-- wait for it-- Republicans. Yep, that's Google, siding up to the party of Mr. Evil himself, Karl Rove.

To help them, they've hired as lobbyists two ex-Republican Senators, Dan Coats of Indiana and Connie Mack of Florida. And on Wednesday, Google will take part in their first political fundraiser, for Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson.

This is why getting involved in anything political is so problematic. Google is helping raise money for Wilson because she's in a tough campaign and she's a supporter of the Net Neutrality Act. That is a huge thing with the tech types. For what it's worth too, Wilson gained a measure of fame for being one of the few Republicans to stand up against Bush's eavesdropping thing. But on the other hand, she sat on the House Intelligence Committee and did nothing during the run up to the war. She's gotten a lot of heat lately for admitting that she knew some of the intelligence was cooked up but not saying anything about it. For this, she's being targeted by the Kos Gang. So while Wilson might be good for Google's business, she's not exactly someone who most of Google's employees would vote for. Yes, the Net Neutrality Act is good for them, but is it worth supporting somebody just on that basis when they've also supported things that have harmed the country?

And then there are the two lobbyists Google hired, Coats and Mack. Neither of them fit into the category of crazy Republicans, just the opposite in fact, but Coats is one of those big on God types who railed about traditional values and actually sponsored legislation to try and clean up the internet. What's that they say about politics and bedfellows?

All of this comes after bad publicity on Google's part for their cave in on China. Which is why they're sucking up the Republicans, because they got hammered by them for giving into the Chinese Government (Republicans are really big on freedom of speech issues in other countries). Oh, and the firm they hired to represent them, the DCI Group, is synonomous with Republican (and Business) dirty tricks. That's another black eye right there.

Google is saying that they're doing this whole thing differently and that employees get a say in what Google does and some sort of committee has been formed to watch over the PAC and make sure it does "no evil." But what if the group decides something's evil and Sergie and Larry say, well, yeah, but what about the benjamins? What then? Google's already experiencing a few problems like this already, such as when they had a meeting with Coca Cola and then had to go find a bunch of Coke to put in their vending machines because everyone there drinks Pepsi.

Truth is, we're shocked-- shocked!-- Google is doing such things. Business is as business does.