Yahoo said Tuesday it has pulled out of China due to a tough business and legal environment, becoming the latest U.S. company to exit rather than comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s increased regulations and censorship rules.
The action is mostly symbolic because many of the company’s online services, such as email and news, were already blocked by China’s censorship authorities starting in 2013. But Yahoo is now the second major U.S. tech company in less than a month to decrease its footprint in China after Microsoft-owned LinkedIn shut down part of its operations in the country in October.
“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,” the company said in a statement. It said it “remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet.”
Chinese internet users trying to access websites run by Yahoo — including AOL.com, Yahoo Weather features, and news outlets like TechCrunch and Engadget — were told Tuesday that Yahoo’s services would no longer be available from mainland China, the Wall Street Journal reported.
TOP REPUBLICAN TORCHES LINKEDIN FOR CENSORING AMERICANS AT THE REQUEST OF CHINA
China already blocked tech giants such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter starting in 2009, and Google withdrew from China in 2010 over censorship and intellectual property theft by the government.
Yahoo’s departure indicates foreign companies face stark challenges operating in China thanks to censorship, more stringent data security and privacy regulations, and politics.
The exit comes as China has begun implementing its Personal Information Protection Law, regulating what user data a company can gather and setting standards for data storage.
Yahoo initially entered the Chinese market in 1999 by launching email, search services, and U.S. news articles translated into Mandarin Chinese. However, most of its Chinese operations have been run by Alibaba since 2005, which phased out most of Yahoo’s platforms in 2013.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Yahoo was acquired by Verizon Communications in 2017, but private equity firm Apollo Global Management announced it would take over the company in a $5 billion deal earlier this year.
