Due to a “increasingly challenging business and legal environment,” Yahoo has decided to leave China permanently
Yahoo's decision follows Microsoft's last month, when it shut down Linkedin in China.
Yahoo said that it would no longer allow access to its services from mainland China “in consideration of the increasingly hostile commercial and regulatory environment,” becoming the second Western internet company to do so in recent weeks.
According to a statement posted on the firm’s website, the company stopped providing content for users in mainland China as of November 1, and directed Yahoo and AOL mail users to other resources. On Tuesday, local Chinese media confirmed Yahoo’s decision.
“In respect of China’s increasingly tough business and legal environment,” a Yahoo representative told Reuters in an email on Tuesday, “Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be available from mainland China as of November 1.”
“Yahoo is devoted to our users’ rights as well as a free and open Internet. We appreciate the support of our users.”
Yahoo’s decision follows that of Microsoft, which shut down Linkedin in China last month, effectively ending the last major US-owned social network in the country. A “more complex working environment and tougher regulatory requirements in China,” according to Linkedin.
Yahoo’s footprint in China had already been significantly reduced in recent years. It still had a weather app and certain pages that carried news articles in foreign languages before to Monday.
Yahoo first entered China in 1998, and in 2012, it agreed to sell its part in the e-commerce behemoth to Alibaba Group. Alibaba also received the right to run Yahoo China under the Yahoo brand for up to four years as part of the acquisition.
Yahoo China eventually shut down its email service and web portal, but the company kept a global research and development facility in Beijing until 2015.
Its exit comes as China’s internet companies face stricter restrictions on everything from content to user privacy, as well as new legislation. Its new Personal Information Protection Act, which aims to protect online user data privacy, went into force on Monday.
Verizon Communications sold Yahoo and its other media companies to Apollo Global, a private equity group, for $5 billion in May. (roughly Rs. 37,350 crore).
On Tuesday, the Chinese website of tech blog Engadget, which was also sold in the sale, was also inaccessible, displaying only Yahoo’s notification that it would no longer provide content to users in mainland China.
