Yahoo Inc. announced its exit from China on Tuesday, citing an “increasingly difficult commercial and regulatory climate.” Chinese authorities keep a tight grip on internet censorship in the nation, requiring enterprises doing business in China to filter politically sensitive or improper content and keywords.
“In acknowledgment of China’s increasingly difficult business and legal climate,” Yahoo stated in a statement, “Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be available from mainland China as of November 1.”
Read also: SSR tops Yahoo’s Most Searched Personality list for 2020
It stated that it “remains dedicated to our users’ rights as well as a free and open internet.” The company’s decision coincided with the introduction of China’s Personal Information Protection Law, which restricts the types of data that firms may collect and establishes criteria for how that data must be handled.
Chinese rules also require corporations operating in the nation to pass over data when requested by authorities, making it harder for Western companies to do business in China because they may face domestic criticism if they comply with China’s demands.
Yahoo was chastised by US senators in 2007 when it gave over data on two Chinese dissidents to Beijing, which resulted in their incarceration. Yahoo has already scaled back its activities in China, closing its Beijing headquarters in 2015. Because at least some of Yahoo’s services, notably its website, have already been blocked, the company’s exit from the nation is primarily symbolic.
Read also: Apple co-founder thinks iPhone 13 has no big difference from its predecessors
Most foreign social networking sites and search engines, such as Facebook and Google, have been blocked in China. Users in China who want to access these services can use a virtual private network to get around the restriction (VPN). Yahoo used to provide music and email service in China. However, both of those services were shut down in the early 2010s.
Yahoo has been the second major US technology corporation in recent weeks to scale its efforts in China. In 2017, Verizon Communications Inc. purchased Yahoo and combined it with AOL, selling the company for USD 5 billion to private equity firm Apollo Global Management. In September, Apollo announced that it had completed its acquisition of Yahoo.
