Yahoo pulls out of China amid ‘challenging’ environment – KIRO 7 News Seattle

HONG KONG – (AP) – Yahoo Inc. announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn its services from China, citing an “increasingly challenging business and legal environment.”

The company said in a statement that its services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1.

“In view of the increasingly difficult business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s service package will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the statement said.

The company’s withdrawal coincided with the entry into force of China’s Personal Data Protection Act on November 1, which restricts what information companies can collect and sets standards for storing it.

The Chinese authorities have a firm grip on internet censorship in the country and require companies operating in China to censor content and keywords that are considered politically sensitive or inappropriate.

Yahoo added that it “remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open Internet”.

Yahoo had previously scaled down its activities in China and closed its Beijing office in 2015. His withdrawal from the country is largely symbolic as at least some Yahoo services, including its web portal, have already been banned.

China has also blocked most of the international social media sites and search engines like Facebook and Google. Users in China who want to access these services bypass the block by using a virtual private network (VPN).

Yahoo also previously operated a music and email service in China, but both services were also discontinued in the early 2010s.

Yahoo is the second major US technology company to reduce its activities in China in the past few weeks. Last month, Microsoft’s professional networking platform LinkedIn announced that it would close its Chinese website and instead replace it with a job board.

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