Yahoo officially abandons China. In fact, it has already left, because it announced this Tuesday, November 2, that since this month it has already closed all its services in the Asian giant.
In a statement sent to the media, Yahoo says that “the business and legal environment” is “increasingly challenging in China” and that the set of services that the company provides around the world “is no longer accessible from mainland China to as of November 1 ”.
Later, he assures that Yahoo remains “committed” to the “rights of users” and to a “free and open Internet.”
The closure of Yahoo in China coincides with the enactment of the country’s so-called Personal Information Protection Law, which came into effect from the first day of November.
The rule, which imposes new data collection restrictions on technology companies, prompted the exit of the second large US technology firm to reduce the size of its operations in China in less than a month, following the close of the Microsoft Corp.’s social networking site LinkedIn.
Yahoo’s exit from China is largely only symbolic, as the company had already begun shutting down its main services – such as email, news, and community services – in China since 2013.
Still, Yahoo’s decision is a sign of the big problems foreign companies face when operating in China.
On Tuesday, Chinese Internet users who were browsing websites managed by Yahoo, such as AOL.com, and the media were also informed TechCrunch and Engadget, which will no longer be able to access Yahoo services from mainland China.
Chinese users of applications such as Yahoo Weather also received notifications that the applications would be suspended as of this Monday, November 1.
The recently introduced regulations governing data privacy and security have increased the uncertainty and compliance costs of operating in China, with some companies preferring to withdraw rather than deal with business risk.
Yahoo dropped out of Verizon just two months ago, following a $ 5 billion deal to sell Verizon Media (renamed Yahoo) to ApolloGroup.
Jim Lanzone, former CEO of CBS Interactive and Tinder, became CEO at Yahoo, displacing Guru Gowrappan.