In this case, the intent seemed to be: to stalk political opponents. Unacceptable abuse of the open culture.
Most reporting and discussions I've seen about this, pose the firing as union-busting behavior by Google. I also disagree there. Just because it took aim at people wanting to organize and rally for their cause, does not mean their cause was the motivation. To me, it means these people took their cause too far, mixed it with work, and publicly attacked the decisions of their colleagues, because these were perceived as homophobic. Just because you are an LGBT+ in reliability engineering, does not mean you get to raise a fuzz anytime Youtube makes a (better informed, less biased) decision you don't agree with. That gets tedious and detrimental to work relations very fast.