Today, Yahoo has announced that its email service is no longer available in China. At login page, it is asking users to transfer their accounts to Alibaba’s email service Alimail. Yahoo already announced the closure of Yahoo China email back in April.
All users having email addresses with suffixes @yahoo.com.cn or @yahoo.cn can now register and transfer their Yahoo email account data to Alimail. Users will also continue to receive emails until December, 31 2014.
Alibaba is one of the largest Internet companies in China and becoming bigger year by year. Yahoo’s this step will bring more users to Alibaba making it even bigger. As Yahoo has stake in Alibaba, it will be profitable for both.
Yahoo bought 40% stake in Alibaba back in 2005 for $1 billion. This helped Alibaba a lot and company has shown good growth in recent years. Now it is leading the e-commerce market in China. Alibaba is expected to go public within next 2 years with the estimated value of $14 billion.