Yahoo stated Tuesday that it was withdrawing from China due to ‘increasingly complex business and legal environments.
Chinese authorities have tightened their grip on internet censorship in China and require that companies operating in China censor keywords and content deemed inappropriate or politically sensitive.
The company released a statement stating that Yahoo’s suite services would no longer be available from China’s mainland as a result of China’s increasingly difficult business and legal environments.
“Yahoo is committed to protecting the rights of our users as well as ensuring a free and open internet,” said the company. The company expressed gratitude to its users for their support.
Yahoo stated Tuesday that it was withdrawing from China due to ‘increasingly complex business and legal environments’
Yahoo’s departure comes as Beijing has imposed fresh curbs on internet companies in areas from content to customer privacy as well as new laws
Yahoo’s move is similar to Microsoft’s in China, where it pulled the plug last month on LinkedIn. This marks the end of the last major U.S.-owned Chinese social network.
LinkedIn also cited China as having a more challenging operating environment and higher compliance requirements.
Yahoo had already significantly reduced its presence in China over recent years. It had previously operated a weather app, and pages that displayed news articles in foreign languages.
Yahoo’s withdrawal coincided in China’s Personal Information Protection Law. It limits the information companies are allowed to gather and sets standards regarding how it must be stored.
Chinese laws also require that companies operating in China must provide data to authorities if requested. This makes it difficult for Western companies to do business in China and could lead to them being subject to pressure from their home countries to comply with China’s demands.
When accessed in China, Beijing on Tuesday, a smart phone displays Yahoo’s home page. Yahoo! Tuesday stated that it intends to leave China
After it gave data on two Chinese dissidents back to Beijing in 2007, Yahoo was criticized by U.S. lawmakers and eventually led to their imprisonment.
Yahoo had previously reduced its China operations, and in 2015 closed its Beijing office.
Its withdrawal is symbolic, as at least some key services of Yahoo, including its web portal, were already blocked by Chinese censorship measures known collectively as the ‘Great Firewall’.
China has also blocked search engines and social media sites from international users, including Facebook and Google. Users in China who want to access these services can bypass the blockades using a virtual personal network (VPN).
Yahoo also used to offer a music- and email-service in China. However, both were shut down in the early 2010s.
Its presence has been declining in the country in recent years. Yahoo shut down its Chinese mail service back in 2013.
A man walks past an LCD screen with the logos of Yahoo.com and Alibaba.com, before attending a news conference organized by the companies at Beijing’s China World Hotel in Beijing. This was in 2005.
Yahoo China was founded in 1999, when it was one of the most prominent internet companies in the world.
Yahoo’s homepage was the most visited site in the world in 2000. However, it was gradually overtaken by Google after a series of setbacks.
Verizon purchased Yahoo in 2017 and merged the company with AOL. However, the entity was later sold to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion.
Apollo announced in September that it had completed the acquisition of Yahoo!
The Chinese website Engadget’s tech blog was also sold as part of the deal. It was unavailable on Tuesday and only displayed Yahoo’s announcement about no longer providing content to users in mainland China.