If Only Yahoo! Shared Google's Mission to Not "Do Evil"

Google's corporate site has a list of 10 Things about their philosophy.  No. 6 is "you can make money without doing evil."  If a Chinese citizen had avoided Yahoo! and instead stuck with Google for his internet dealings, he might not be in prison now.  The saga of Yahoo! handing over information to the Chinese government which ultimately led to the arrest and imprisonment of a man for his political views and writings on the internet has been unfolding for a few years now, but today's Financial Times has an update to the story including an apology from a top Yahoo! executive for not divulging to U.S. authorities everything they knew about the case:

"Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement ahead of a congressional hearing next week that he 'realised' that Yahoo had additional information about the nature of the probe into one of its users, Shi Tao, a journalist now serving a 10-year prison sentence in China, months after he testified that Yahoo had 'no information' about the investigation.
Yahoo has faced intense criticism for its involvement in the case because, according to US lawmakers, police in Beijing only found Mr Shi after Yahoo provided them with his e-mail account, IP address log-on history, and the contents of his e-mails."

Would things have turned out differently if the Chinese journalist had not used any Yahoo! properties?  Or would Google have also caved in to Chinese pressure?  Keep in mind that it's not merely the size of the Chinese market that drives these collusions with authoritarian regimes; these are actual people making decisions on behalf of their personal security and well-being.  "When in China, do as the Chinese police tell you to do" would be a wisely self-preserving policy, and I wonder who would actually be able to stand up to the Chinese authorities when faced with such a dilemma themselves?

Comments

[Shefaly]

"Would things have turned out differently if the Chinese journalist had not used any Yahoo! properties? Or would Google have also caved in to Chinese pressure?"

This at once is and is not a hypothetical question. The end game for all profit-making firms is to gain access to the Chinese market for their own products and as far as I can see, the product range of neither Yahoo nor Google includes 'democratic values'.

Considering Google caved in to pressure to censor search results - you cannot use Google.cn to find information about the Dalai Lama or about Tiananmen Square - past behaviour would suggest that Google would have caved in.

The question to ask is this:

Can the Alien Torts Claims Act be used by an independent party to sue Yahoo in American Federal Courts?