Kiran Upadhyay

Yahoo is bidding adios to China with the closure of its research center in Beijing — its only location in the country — as SCMP first reported. Hundreds of staff are expected to be laid off. “We are constantly making changes to align resources, and to foster better collaboration and innovation across our business. Today we informed our employees based in Beijing that we will be closing our office there,” Yahoo said in a statement. The Beijing office originally ran Yahoo services in China, but with all of its consumers-facing activities in the country now shuttered — including its web portal, music service and email — the office effectively become a research center. Sources at the company told SCMP that, with wages two times higher in China than India and no specific services in China, the presence wasn’t particularly logical. Alibaba manages Yahoo’s operations in China, but the Beijing office was notable for being Yahoo-controlled. Yahoo employed 350 staff there. It hasn’t sai

If you’re visiting any Yahoo property today, chances are you’ll see an “Upgrade to the new Firefox” link in the top-right corner of your browser window. The prompt also appears if you’re using Internet Explorer, Opera and even the new Yandex browser. However, the prompt is missing from Safari, which will surely prompt a new round of speculation about Apple’s rumored switch to Yahoo as its default search engine. Given that Firefox now uses Yahoo as its default search engine, this move doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Yahoo clearly wants as many people as possible to use Firefox — and with it its search engine (which is powered by Microsoft Bing). Firefox’s user share has dropped quite a bit over the last few years, so Mozilla has no objections to putting the Firefox logo in front of as many Yahoo users as possible. Changing the default search engine in Firefox is trivial (and Firefox recently made it even easier), but most users never bother to make the switch. The new Yahoo Searc

Starting in December, Firefox will use Yahoo as its default search engine in the United States on mobile and desktop. As a part of this five-year deal, Yahoo will also launch a new search experience for Firefox users in the U.S., which should go live at the same time Firefox makes the switch away from Google. The new search experience will feature “a clean, modern and immersive design that reflects input from the Mozilla team.” Here is what that will look like: In Russia, Mozilla will use Yandex Search and in China, it will use Baidu as the default. Google, DuckDuckGo and a number of other local search engines will remain as built-in alternatives. The Mozilla Foundation has long made most of its money through its search partnership with Google, which has always been the default in Firefox. Indeed, in 2012 — the last year we have data from — 88% of Mozilla’s income came from Google. That contract with Google was set to expire this year, though, and it look like either Yahoo mad

Use email? Own an Android device? Not a fan of Gmail? There’s good news coming your way. Google is preparing a major update for Gmail for Android that will, among many things, finally handle email accounts from other service providers, such as Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo and AOL [mandatory disclaimer: AOL is, of course, the owner of TechCrunch]. That’s according to the sleuths at Android Police, who discovered evidence of a redesigned app that is expected to launch soon. Update: The Verge also points out that POP, IMAP and Exchange are also supported. You can glimpse a look at the unified Gmail app for Android in the video tour below, which was surfaced by Android Police. The refreshed looking app — which follows Google’s new Material Design language — includes round icons, a clean and bright design and, most notably, said support for third-party email accounts. We expect this update to roll out this week and suspect that this update has been anticipated by loyal Google custo