New Delhi, Nov 2 (IANS): Yahoo has become the latest US tech company to end its presence in mainland China as tougher regulations are imposed there, BBC reported.

The firm said its decision was due to an "increasingly challenging business and legal environment" in the country", the report added.

Yahoo users in China are now greeted with a message saying its sites are no longer accessible.

The company says Yahoo products and services remain unaffected elsewhere around the world.

In a statement, it says: "Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet. We thank our users for their support."

Yahoo's move follows closely behind Microsoft's announcement last month that it was removing LinkedIn - its business-focused social network - from China, something it also blamed on "a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements", the report added.

China is in the midst of a large-scale crackdown on big tech companies - both those from the US and its own native giants.

A range of laws passed in recent years contributes to what Yahoo and others characterise as a "challenging" market, the report said.

The Personal Information Protection Law - or PIPL - which came into effect on 1 November, is one of them.

Designed as a Chinese data-protection law, it introduces a range of regulations about how data can be collected and stored, with the threat of potentially massive fines of up to 5 per cent of a company's annual turnover.