Yahoo announced its “progress report” on “product prioritization” for Q2, which is essentially the company’s version of Google’s “spring cleaning”. In other words, it’s shutting some stuff down, and reducing support for other things.
Last year, Yahoo announced that it would shut down the Yahoo Directory, which basically put the company on the map in the first place. Here’s what Yahoo had to say about its latest round:
- Support for Yahoo Mail on older iOS devices (built-in Mail app): In order to maintain focus on the security, speed and functionality of Yahoo Mail on the latest systems, we are no longer supporting Yahoo Mail on the built-in Mail app for devices prior to iOS 5 on June 15, 2015. If you use iOS 4 & earlier, you can continue to use Yahoo Mail on their Safari mobile browser at mail.yahoo.com.
- Support for syncing Yahoo Contacts on older Macs: Similarly, to provide the best and safest experience, starting June 15, 2015, we are no longer supporting Yahoo Contacts syncing for devices prior to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. If you use Mac OS X 10.7 Lion & earlier, you can continue to access your Yahoo Contacts through Yahoo Mail on their web browser.
- maps.yahoo.com: The Yahoo Maps site will close at the end of June. However, in the context of Yahoo search and on several other Yahoo properties including Flickr, we will continue to support maps. We made this decision to better align resources to Yahoo’s priorities as our business has evolved since we first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago.
- GeoPlanet & PlaceSpotter APIs: For developers who use GeoPlanet and PlaceSpotter APIs, we are standardizing and consolidating our offerings by retiring these APIs in Q3. The functionality provided by these APIs are available today through Yahoo Query Language (YQL) and BOSS. Information on how to migrate the APIs is available on the websites forYQL (non-commercial usage with rate limited to 2,000 queries per day, per table, per app ID) and BOSS (commercial usage).
- Market-specific Yahoo media properties: In the coming weeks, we will shut down some of our regional, genre-specific media properties to streamline our editorial offering. The content from these sites will be redistributed across the Yahoo network. Here are the affected markets and properties:
- In mid-June, we will close Yahoo Music in France and Canada as well as Yahoo Movies in Spain. We will also close our Yahoo Philippines homepage and genre-specific media sites, and redirect to the Yahoo Singapore homepage.
- At the end of June, we will close Yahoo TV in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Canada as well as Yahoo Autos in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
- In early July, Yahoo Entertainment in Singapore will close.
- Yahoo Pipes: Pipes creation will not be supported as of Aug. 30 this year. Pipes infrastructure will run until Sept. 30, 2015 in read-only mode to help developers migrate their data. Please visit http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes for additional details.
I doubt that much of this will be incredibly missed by very many people, but the decision on Maps is particularly interesting simply because Yahoo has been one of the “Big 3” search engines, and one of those not having its own maps product is noteworthy, even if few ever used it in the first place.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
