I hope this woman gets every penny Yahoo has and then some.
I can remember all too well a conversation I had, sitting in a cubicle with Filo and Zod, wherein I told them what a horrible thing it was to be doing business in China, and how we needed to intentionally stay out to encourage them to change their ways if they wanted to join the rest of the world.... let them create their own little fiefdom if they wanted to, but if they wanted to continue to treat their citizens like shit, then we didn't have to be a part of it -- and oh how I predicted that "we" (now they, thankfully) would be a part of it. Heck, it almost sounds like the story they tell is the hypothetical I proposed in that cubicle meeting.
That meeting, as I look back on it, was really one of the defining moments for me in my Yahoo career, wherein I realized I didn't want to be there any longer. I came to the point where I felt... dirty, for lack of a better word... every day when I came home from the office.
My impassioned speech about considering the potential consequences, and the position Yahoo would be in when they were served with the Chinese equivalent of a subpoena, so that the government could identify and abscond with one of its own dissidents who wanted nothing more than the rights we hold near and dear to be his own as well... that speech was disregarded with a comment from Zod that just made we recoil: "How can we turn away from that many eyeballs?"
The answer: By maintaining your dignity. Something Yahoo hasn't had in a while.
Duly noted. But, it's not like any of Yahoo's competitors are being any more noble. Can you name a major American company that doesn't do business in China and doesn't want too?
Companies are really about money and that is it. Shareholders care little about dignity and human rights - note how major corporations treat employees as just another variable cost - and they are the masters in the end.
If its shareholders cared, Yahoo would care. Same for Google, same for Microsoft.
Shareholders clearly don't care.
Oh, that's crap, and you know it. We all know how much "voice" shareholders honestly have in today's corporations. Even if you go to the annual shareholder's meeting, if you should dare to have the audacity to raise questions about the direction of the company, then the meeting is quickly adjourned. Shareholder meetings are little echo chambers where if you don't speak the "party line", then nobody wants to hear what you have to say.
Corporations do things all the time because they think it's the "right" thing to do. Do you think Ben and Jerry's polls all of its shareholders each year to see if they still want the company to be a "good citizen"?