MrKurtz

Their shares went down immediately after due to concerns they forfeited the opportunity to expand their business in the world's 2nd largest economy, but as the immediate economic damage was immaterial their decision wasn't followed with a deluge of shareholder lawsuits.

Google already bowed out of one major market due to ethical disagreements, asking them to do that again with their home market is unrealistic - lobbying to mend the laws is the more sensible approach and one that scales better to businesses of that size.

Besides despite disagreements with US policy it's still not China.

You can't declare that they're not fighting because you have no knowledge of what is being done by their lawyers and lobbyists, especially since the courts involved are secret.

Lobbying scales better than shutting down or suspending service.

Shifting the blame and the burden for policy reform onto firms is not only silly but also unfair, you can't really expect them to shut down, they are not one man operations like Lavabit.

The burden isn't on Google (I'm not sure why you are singling out Google) their hands are tied from a legal and practical standpoints.

They receive warrants and subpoenas with which they have to comply to keep doing business, if you don't care for that blame the politician and the legal system, focusing on Google is not only missing the point, it's unfair

Lavabit was a tiny private operation. If you think that a publicly traded multi billion dollar company with millions of users and customers can just shut down to avoid complying with government requests then you are a deluded moron.

You can't convincingly make that argument since you don't know what lawyers have been doing behind the closed doors of secret court rooms nor do you have knowledge of their relevant lobbying, you're just assuming things. No to forget that Google was the first to publish a transparency report in which it publishes the number of NSLs, so there is that - it's not correct to use "Google" as a shorthand for "US tech companies".

"Participates" is the wrong characterisation, they are under the jurisdiction of FISA orders, if the NSA wants to call that PRISM, it's their business. Also worth mentioning is that providers in non-US countries are subject to their respective country's surveillance efforts, so either way it's a red herring argument.

If you are seriously suggesting that abandoning the US market is a realistic option, especially for a multibillion dollar corporation, then you are (and I'm not using this word lightly) an idiot.

Not to mention that there is no US equivalent to the rampant human rights violations and censorship in China.