आईसीटी समाचार
Yahoo said that it will no longer allow access to its services from mainland China "in consideration of the increasingly hostile commercial and regulatory climate," becoming the second Western internet company to do so in recent weeks. According to a statement posted on the firm's website, the company ceased delivering material for customers in mainland China as of November 1, and directed Yahoo and AOL mail users to alternative resources. On Tuesday, local Chinese media confirmed Yahoo's decision.
"In respect of China's increasingly tough economic and legal climate," a Yahoo representative told Reuters in an email on Tuesday, "Yahoo's suite of services will no longer be available from mainland China as of November 1." "Yahoo is devoted to our users' rights as well as a free and open Internet. We appreciate the support of our users." Yahoo's decision follows that of Microsoft, which shut down Linkedin in China last month, thereby ending the last major US-owned social network in the country. A "more complex working environment and tougher regulatory requirements in China," according to Linkedin.
Yahoo's footprint in China has already been significantly reduced in recent years. It still had a weather app and certain pages that carried news stories in different languages before to Monday. Yahoo first entered China in 1998, and in 2012, it agreed to sell its part in the e-commerce behemoth to Alibaba Group. Alibaba also received the right to run Yahoo China under the Yahoo name for up to four years as part of the acquisition. Yahoo China eventually shut down its email service and web portal, but the company kept a worldwide research and development facility in Beijing until 2015.
Its exit comes as China's internet firms face stricter restrictions on everything from content to user privacy, as well as new legislation. Its new Personal Information Protection Act, which aims to safeguard internet user data privacy, went into force on Monday. Verizon Communications sold Yahoo and its other media companies to Apollo Global, a private equity group, for $5 billion in May. On Tuesday, the Chinese website of tech blog Engadget, which was also sold in the sale, was also inaccessible, displaying only Yahoo's notification that it would no longer provide content to users in mainland China.
