...Google's Mideast regional marketing executive [Wael] Ghonim helped administer a group of Web pages that served as a rallying point for activists...He was detained by the police, made a martyr in the streets, and then released...A lot of U.S. companies...watched with trepidation. Many of them now earn [major]...income...from the sale of big-ticket items...[to] governments...Companies may not want to be lapdogs to dictators. But they also don't want to tick off their chief customer...Reflecting on Mr. Ghonim's extracurricular activities, an executive at one big U.S. manufacturer operating abroad was adamant:..."It wouldn't be allowed."...[T]hat's exactly the sort of traditionalism the Google culture, and much of Silicon Valley, rebels against...yet even Google appears to be tiptoeing through this...American companies have long insisted that activism in dicey parts of the world...can be counterproductive...It can alienate your hosts, diminish your influence...[H]uman rights are a tricky business. Better, they say, to...influence...local officials by example. That's fine, but the crowds in Tahrir Square would note that well-run U.S. companies did little to alter three decades of Mubarak rule.