From CNET News (link)
“It is more important for us to participate, not only for economic reasons, but to be able to” help shape where the industry is going, Yang said during a question-and-answer session at the Thomas Weisel Partners Internet and Telecom Conference in San Francisco.
“You have to balance the risk of not participating,” he said. “And people don’t realize that being in the market every day there, and being on the ground, we are seeing changes, on the whole, for the positive.”
Yahoo and the other top U.S.-based search engines have come under fire for their practice of cooperating with the Chinese government in censoring information online. Yahoo has been accused of providing evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese Internet users, including a journalist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The arrests “are never things you go home and feel good about,” Yang said. “We feel horrible about that…We have no way of preventing that beforehand….If you want to do business there you have to comply.”
