On Aug 19, 2013 shows an announcement on the email web pages of Yahoo China. Yahoo China said in the announcement that it decided to shut down its email service on Aug 19.

Yahoo arrived in China 14 years ago. And one of the first services that it launched here was email. To many, it seemed to be the best choice at that time. In 2005, Yahoo sold its China business, including the mail service, to Alibaba, the country's biggest e-commerce company.

In retrospect, this could have been the first hint of its fate. In September 2007, Yahoo China changed its email domain name from to . The company claimed that this would be a life-time mailbox for users. Combining many of Yahoo's other services like Flickr and music box, the new email service helped the company win quite a lucrative share of the market, but only for a very short period of time. On April 18th, Yahoo China told its users that it would close down its email services in China in four months. The decision came on the heels of the closure of music search in China last January, and the closing of its free photo service in 2009. Millions of users will have to make the change, but a specific number is not yet available.

Before the service is completely shut down, users are advised to register with AliCloud run by Alibaba, which became yahoo China's parent company in 2005. China has some 200 million email users, and nowadays it's common to have multiple mailbox accounts, as consumers' demands are changing all the time.

Now, the top five e-mail services in China are all provided by Chinese companies. Tecent QQ, Sina, and Sohu are some of Yahoo's most outstanding rivals.

Yahoo's email service rank has dropped from number four to six from last year. And for foreign email lovers, there's also some good choice.

Key words
雅虎yǎ hǔ：yahoo
关闭ɡuān bì：shut down
邮箱yóu xiānɡ：email