Yahoo Pulls Out Of China Amidst Concerns Over Increasingly Challenging Business And Legal Environment

Yahoo Inc has decided to pull out of China amid an increasingly challenging legal and business environment in the country.

The company has declared that its services will be inaccessible in mainland China from November onwards as it follows LinkedIn in reducing its operations in the Asian country.

Last month, LinkedIn had substituted its Chinese site with a jobs board on the back of similar concerns.

“Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet. We thank our users for their support,” the official statement from the US-based technology firm read, as reported by the Associated Press.

Yahoo had also formerly downsized its operations in China, even closing down its office in Beijing back in 2015.

However, quite a few of Yahoo’s services and also the web portal are already blocked in China. Hence, its withdrawal from the country is largely perceived to be a ‘symbolic’ move.

China also recently implemented its Personal Information Protection Law that restricts companies from gathering information and setting standards over its storage. It further requires them to submit the data upon being asked to do so by the concerned authorities as well.