The American search engine moves away from the Asian country that increases the pressure on the digital sector.
The American Search Engine Yahoo!, one of the most popular in the early days of the internet, announced the end of its activities in China.
Yahoo! “It will not be available from mainland China” as of November 1, the group said in an undated statement.
The company had launched a search engine in the country in 1999, betting on the growth of a large market in gestation at the time when the internet was in its infancy in China.
The Asian giant is today one of the most connected countries in the world with particularly dynamic and innovative local companies.
Questioned by AFP, a spokesman for Yahoo! justified this decision, citing “the increasingly difficult business and legal environment in China.”
Yahoo had drastically reduced its presence in China since shutting down its messaging service in 2013.
The American company is the latest in a list of international groups to leave the Chinese market.
Last month, Microsoft’s professional social network LinkedIn also announced its departure from China due to a “difficult environment.”
In the name of “stability”, the Chinese authorities remove politically sensitive topics from the web and ask the internet giants to block unwanted content.
Refusing to comply with the demands of Beijing, the US social networks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, the participatory encyclopedia Wikipedia, as well as multiple foreign media are totally blocked in China by a “great computer wall” erected by the censors of the regime. (I)
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