Yahoo stops email service for mainland users in final retreat from China
- Yahoo Mail told mainland Chinese users over the weekend that they could no longer send or receive email after February 28
- The move marks the US company’s final retreat from China amid tightened data regulations in the country
US internet company Yahoo said it would officially stop providing email services to mainland Chinese users from February 28 onwards, following its announcement in November that it was withdrawing from China, where foreign websites such as Google’s search engine and Twitter have been unavailable for years.
After Monday, Yahoo Mail users “will no longer be able to send or receive new emails from mainland China or download data”, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in an email sent to mainland users on Saturday, urging them to back up emails, contacts and calendar events in their accounts before the deadline.
The company also stressed that Yahoo Mail would remain available for global users outside mainland China, although it did not elaborate on why it was pulling out of the market.
Yahoo sounds final retreat in China amid tightened regulation
LinkedIn launches China-only app without social feed
On social media over the weekend, some Chinese netizens mourned the end of Yahoo’s services in the country. “This is the end of an era, and it feels like our generation is always ‘witnessing history’,” said a user on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging site.
Yahoo, which launched its Chinese internet operations in 1999, shut its last remaining physical presence in the country in March 2015, when its research and development operation in Beijing was closed. Its news and community services in China were terminated in 2013.