Yahoo logo

Yahoo to shutter Chinese operation

Trade
Image: Yahoo

19 March 2015

Yahoo is closing its only remaining office in China and laying off between 200 and 300 employees there, news reports said on Wednesday.

The moves are part of CEO Marissa Mayer’s efforts to rein in costs at the Internet company. Yahoo’s office in Beijing, the company’s only physical presence in mainland China, has housed an R&D centre employing engineers.

“We will be consolidating certain functions into fewer offices, including to our headquarters in Sunnyvale, California,” a Yahoo representative told the Wall Street Journal.

Since October, the company has cut between 700 and 900 employees in locations including Bangalore, India, and Canada.

The layoffs in China represent about 2% of Yahoo’s total workforce of 12,500 as of the end of last year.

The Beijing operation was focused on Yahoo’s global business, according to its website, employing engineers to develop new ways to personalise Yahoo content and improve its ad targeting.

Yahoo and other US-based Web companies have faced issues around Internet censorship and local competition in China. Yahoo stopped offering its e-mail service there in 2013, asking users to transfer their accounts to Alimail, which is owned by Alibaba.

Mayer said in February that Yahoo would spin off its 15% stake in Alibaba, one of China’s largest Internet companies, into a separate company.

IDG News Service

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie