Yahoo has closed down its Email
service in Republic of China,
and it has attached a note on its log-in page requesting the users to
kindly switch their accounts to Alibaba’s Alimail.
Previously Yahoo had announced that very soon it would shut down the
Email service in China, and now the doomsday has finally arrived. Eventually
Yahoo has been shutting down its existing services in China since 2005 when it acquired a stake in Alibaba, which is undoubtedly one
of the biggest Internet companies of that country.
Earlier in January 2013 Yahoo put an official end to its Chinese music
service as an adjustment plan in their product strategy. Yahoo China has added
a notice in its email login page, where it said that users with the suffixes
@yahoo.cn and @yahoo.com.cn can easily register and transfer all of their
important information to a newly-created Alibaba account. The best part is
users will continue to receive all of their emails send to their current Yahoo
addresses till December 31, 2014.
It has to be mentioned here that in 2005 Yahoo invested a huge $1
billion in order to acquire as much as 40% stake in Alibaba. Gradually Alibaba
has emerged a lot and it has even grown into the backbone of burgeoning
e-commerce market of the Republic of China.
Must Read: Yahoo Acquires Rockmelt Social Browser
Last year in September, Alibaba successfully completed an initial
repurchase of its shares from Yahoo by spending $7.6 billion. Currently the
Internet pioneer owns 24% stake in the Chinese company. As per early
estimations, Yahoo’s shares are likely to go public in the next two years or
so. The total value of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba is estimated to be worth around
$14 billion.
The Sunnyvale-based company is trying to ensure a successful footprint in
China, and to do that it is spending a hell lot of money. It isn’t solely
relying on its earlier investment in Alibaba for sure. Actually it has already
acquired Ztelic, which is a Beijing-based startup that collects social network
data. Even eight core members of Ztelic’s development and engineering section
joined Yahoo’s own R&D team in Beijing.
See Also: Yahoo upgraded its eMail Service
Mr. Hao Zheng, who is the founder of Ztelic, has been given a very critical
leadership role in the company’s Beijing Global R&D Center.
