Yahoo to close last China operation in Beijing

In a new cost-cutting move, Yahoo Inc. announced Thursday that it’s closing its Beijing research and development center and leaving China.

The company said the Beijing office's functions would be consolidated in other locations. It gave no details of how many people would lose their jobs but said they would be "treated with respect and fairness."

The company, based in Sunnyvale, California, has cut jobs elsewhere in a sweeping corporate overhaul as it tries to catch up with Internet users who have shifted to using smartphones and tablets instead of laptop and desktop computers.

Yahoo turned over control of its China operations to its partner Alibaba Group in 2005 as part of a corporate tie-up. Yahoo stopped offering services in China in 2013.

Yahoo's profit for the quarter ending in December fell 52 percent from a year earlier, and revenue dipped 1 percent.

The Associated Press