And anyway, it's a bad comparison, there is a conspiracy that, say Google or Firefox is collaborating, but it's very clear that yandex is an arm of the Russian government
I might be missing something, but why is it clear to you that Yandex is an arm of the Russian government? Yandex has been critical of the Russian government's war on Ukraine [0] and faced consequences because of it which signals to me that this isn't the case. Yandex made plans to exit Russia because of the company's disagreement with the government even. [1]
As someone living in the west, I'm disappointed by our governments' hypocrisy over the massacre in Palestine while supporting Ukraine's right to resisting an invading force. Our governments' support of the massacre in Palestine (even dealing out death to peaceful resistance, as we can see by the bombing of Yemen when its people merely made economic trade inconvenient to protest the massacre) made me think the people in charge of western countries are no better and probably even worse than dictatorships such as China and Russia. (Western governments are just better to their own citizens apparently.)
It can be argued, that Yandex didn't do enough to fight the Putin's regime, but:
1. How realistic is to expect something like this from Corporations? How much have American corporations fought against American terrorism or attacks on freedoms (e.g. of speech)? Exactly.
2. It absolutely does not mean that they were an arm of the government. Among the tech giants, even without the Russia caveats, Yandex was definitely a good guy, with good ethics and core, with people who cared (and who helped a lot in personal capacities).
A very telling sign is a list of Western countries that participate in the Yemen war, but want to keep it a secret from their citizens. Yes, they fully know that what they are doing is wrong. No, they don't want to stop doing the evil, they only want for people not to know.
This is a pattern. Remember illegal CIA prisons all around the world, torturing people?
Democracy often means that bad deeps must be better camouflaged/hidden, not that thr actions and people doing the deciding are inherently better.
