Yahoo second US tech firm to exit China after LinkedIn

Details:

• Yahoo said that effective November 1, its services were no longer available in mainland China as it was “committed to the rights” of its users and to a “free and open internet.”
• The departure is mostly symbolic as the company had already reduced its China operations. Yahoo had also closed down its Beijing office in 2015, and its web portal and other services have been blocked in the country.

Dive deeper:

• Yahoo is the second prominent US firm in recent weeks to leave the Chinese market. In October, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn said it would shut down the social function of its localized platform in China later this year, citing “more challenging operating environment” and “greater compliance requirements.”
• The exit of the US internet firms comes on the heels of China’s new personal information protection law, which lays out ground rules on data collection, use, and storage for companies. The law also requires multinational corporations that move such information out of the country to get certification for data protection from authorized institutions.