Yahoo China Finally Shut Down For Good As Alibaba Take Over

Yahoo has been slowly pulling out of the Chinese market for quite some time and they are now finally shutting down the last of their operations. Yahoo signed a multi-billion dollar partnership with the Chinese internet giant, Alibaba Group, which made it possible for them to continue profiting from the Chinese market despite pulling out. As part of the deal Alibaba Group and Yahoo agreed that Alibaba would continue operating Yahoo services for 4 years, that they would start to buy back their shares from Yahoo and they also agreed that Yahoo China’s staff would move to work for Alibaba after the deal is finished.

Now that deal has come to an end Chinese internet giant Alibaba wants to remove the last of the Yahoo branded services from their network and so Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News and community service sites by Yahoo are all gone. This means Yahoo China now waves goodbye to the Chinese market for good. Yahoo still did very well out of the Chinese market purchasing 40% of Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion. Alibaba recently bought back a chunk of their shares for $7.6 billion and Yahoo still has 24% of Alibaba’s shares estimated at $14 billion according to TechCrunch. As TechCrunch also report:

“Alibaba Group’s decision to gradually cease operating its Yahoo-branded properties is a reminder of the struggles that major U.S. Internet companies–including Google, eBay and Amazon–have faced in China due to confluence of factors including government censorship, failure to localize effectively and the rapid rise of Chinese companies like Baidu and Tencent.”

Image courtesy of Yahoo China