Yahoo Ceases Operations In China Due To "Challenging Business" Environment

(RTTNews) - Yahoo Inc. Tuesday said it has pulled out of China, citing an "increasingly challenging business and legal environment," thus becoming the latest U.S. company to pull out of the Asian country.

Yahoo said it ceased to offer its services from November 1. Yahoo users in China are now greeted with a message saying its sites are no longer accessible.

"In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo's suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1," a Yahoo spokesman said, according to WSJ.

"Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet. We thank our users for their support," the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Yahoo's decision to pull out comes on the same day China implemented the Personal Information Protection Law - or PIPL, which is a privacy law that will control data collected by technology companies.

However, Yahoo ceasing its operations in China was for just namesake, as the company had already stopped several of its main services, including email, news and community services in China starting in 2013.

Yahoo is second major tech company from the U.S. to stop its Chinese operations in less than a month, after Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) announced that it is shutting down social-networking site LinkedIn's operations in the country.

"We're also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we've made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn," LinkedIn senior vice-president Mohak Shroff had said at that time.