Yahoo Inc. is withdrawing from China, citing an increasingly challenging business and legal environment.
‘Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,’ the company said.
Yahoo has become the second US technology firm to downsize China operations in less than a month. Microsoft Corp withdrew its LinkedIn social-networking site.
Yahoo’s withdrawal coincided with the implementation of China’s Personal Information Protection Law aimed at curbing data collection by technology companies.
Yahoo began shutting down its main services, such as email, news and community services, in China in 2013.
Fast-fashion company H&M lost sales after it was targeted in March for a boycott, months after raising concerns about forced-labour allegations in China’s Xinjiang region. Shanghai Disneyland was temporarily closed this week after a visitor was found to have Covid-19.
Many foreign multinational companies also face hurdles trying to bring in new staff or host visiting executives because of China’s closed borders policies.
Yahoo websites like AOL.com, media outlets TechCrunch and Engadget, and Yahoo Weather would no longer be accessible from mainland China.
Applecensorship.com, a website run by anonymous anti-censorship activist group GreatFire, showed that other Yahoo apps – such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail – had been unavailable on Apple’s China app store since Oct 14.
China’s new privacy regulations kicked in on 1 November, requiring organisations and individuals handling personal information of Chinese citizens to minimise their collection and obtain user consent.
Apple and Tesla Inc. have sought to comply with the regulations.
The regulations are part of a broader crackdown on big tech by Beijing this year. Alibaba was fined a record $2.8 billion in April for antitrust violations.