Internet firm Yahoo (YHOO.NASDAQ) will close its Beijing research center, offering its 350 employees there at least four months’ worth of compensation when layoffs begin at the end of this month, South China Morning Post reported, citing unnamed employees and local media. The center opened in 2009 as the company sought ways to expand globally, with an executive then citing the mainland’s abundance of engineers and scientists as the main reason for its establishment. A unnamed staff member quoted by Caixin magazine raised the possibility that rising labor costs in Beijing might have led to the center’s shuttering.