Yahoo To Close Maps, Pipes And Other Services

Yahoo is to close Maps, Pipes and a number of other services as it continues to streamline is product portfolio.

The move was confirmed by chief architect Amotz Maimon, in what he called a “progress report” on Yahoo’s “product prioritization” in the year ahead.

Diet Plan

“At Yahoo, we continue to focus on our key product pillars: search, communications and digital content,” Maimon wrote. “Part of that focus includes taking a hard look at our existing products and services, and ensuring our resources are spent smartly and with a clear purpose.”

The first product to go is maps.yahoo.com (Yahoo Maps), which will close at the end of the month after it was first launched eight years ago. However, in the context of Yahoo search and on several other Yahoo properties including Flickr, it will continue to support maps.

The casualty is Yahoo Pipes. Pipes was a web application that allowed developers to build data mashups that aggregate webpages and services.

Developer APIs such as GeoPlanet and PlaceSpotter will be retired in the third quarter. Yahoo said that the functionality provided by these APIs are available today through Yahoo Query Language (YQL) and BOSS.

From 15 June, the company will no longer support Yahoo Mail on the built-in Mail app for devices prior to iOS 5. It is also ending support for syncing Yahoo Contacts on older Macs prior to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Regional casualties

Yahoo is also closing some of its regional, genre-specific media properties, the content of of which will be redistributed across the Yahoo network. Closing down is Yahoo Music in France and Canada as well as Yahoo Movies in Spain. The Yahoo Philippines homepage and genre-specific media sites is being axed, and instead redirected to the Yahoo Singapore homepage.

In addition, Yahoo TV in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Canada as well as Yahoo Autos in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy is also being closed this month. Next month, it is bye bye also to Yahoo Entertainment.

Yahoo has previously closed a number of other products and services under the leadership of CEO Marissa Maye. In 2013 for example, the company closed the pioneering search engine AltaVista, as well as the browser plug-in Axis.

Prior to that it also closed its Chinese Yahoo Mail service, its events planner (Yahoo Upcoming), and its Groupon-rival (Yahoo Deals). Other closures include Yahoo’s SMS alerts service and Yahoo Kids.

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