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Power isn't uniform or absolute. Centralised powers have capabilities, but also weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and Yahoo in particular is an exceptionally vulnerable technology company. Companies can influence specific laws, and sometimes work in concert to achieve specific aims (see the totalitarian plutonomic pact, a/k/a TPP, backed by virtually every major infotech and comms company: Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Verizon, among others). But they're also vulnerable to specific legal threats, investigations, and withdrawals of contracts. Where corporations influence governments most effectively is where the collective interests of political and industrial leaders is furthered. Where corporations successfully oppose governments is where the corporations have some level of political leverage, often through influence on key elements of local economy. Where government has influence over corporations is where there's little financial upside, and often only a vague and long-term benefit to the company, and where national security or mass popular interest plays strongly against the companies. Yahoo had no leverage and considerable downside in trying to stand up against this order. The long-term downside to compliance is what's emerged here: disclosure of the project and a possible scuttling of Yahoo's announced purchase by Verizon. The best case for Yahoo without the Verizon takeover is that it's dead. With the takeover, some of the investors and executives recoup a small amount of the long-term loss of value in the company. Yahoo had little to gain by fighting (it would have been executively decapitated and entered immediately into a likely fatal legal fight with the US Government), and something to gain by playing along. Mayer took the easy, and unprincipled, decision to play along. |