Last Updated on 22/11/2021 by Sanskriti
As stricter rules are implemented in mainland China, Yahoo has become the latest US internet corporation to leave the country. Yahoo will no longer be providing its services in China “in recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment” as it will be the second tech firm to leave the country.
Users in China are now being met with a notification stating that Yahoo’s sites are no longer available. “Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and free and open internet. We thank our users for their support.”
Yahoo said its goods and services are unaffected in other parts of the world.
“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” a Yahoo spokesperson told Reuters in an email on Tuesday.
It is being said that Yahoo’s decision is all inspired by Microsoft, which also left Linkedin in China last month, Its business-oriented social network – which is also blamed on China, “a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements”.
Yahoo’s footprint in China has already been significantly reduced in recent years. It still had a weather app and certain pages that carried news stories in different languages before Monday.
In 1998 Yahoo first started its business and sold its interest in the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group in 2012. Alibaba also received the right to run Yahoo China for up to four years under the Yahoo name. Yahoo China eventually shut down its email service and web portal, but the company kept a worldwide research and development facility in Beijing until 2015.
Its exit comes as China’s internet firms face stricter restrictions on everything from content to user privacy, as well as new legislation. Its new Personal Information Protection Act, which aims to safeguard internet user data privacy, went into force on Monday.
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.
