Yahoo!, troubled internet giant, 'to shut down Delicious'
Yahoo! is believed to be shutting down at least eight of its services, including Delicious, the bookmarking service loved by technology experts.
Yahoo! pays Carol Bartz $47m in her first year as chief executive. Photo: Reuters
By Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor
The news comes only three days after it emerged that the internet company is to sack 560 employees.
Delicious, a tool which allows people save, manage, and share web links is one of the most popular services which is to be axed by the ailing Yahoo!.
The news of its imminent closure has been met with much protest from the technology community, which is mourning the death of the popular start up acquired by Yahoo! five years ago.
Other services which are understood to be on the list of closures include AltaVista – the once popular search engine, Yahoo! Buzz and Yahoo! Bookmarks.
A company spokesman said: “Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond.
We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.”
They added: “The only service which we have confirmed is to be shut down is Yahoo! Buzz.” They declined to comment on the other products understood to be facing the axe but stopped short at denying the claims.
Carol Bartz, Yahoo!’s chief executive, who was hired last year to reverse the company’s popularity decline, said in an email leaked to AllthingsD earlier this week: “You've heard me say before that I didn't come to cut Yahoo! to greatness.
That's still true. This decision [the job cuts] is about more than cost savings. The changes are meant to get us into a position so we can invest more in the kind of products and technology we know we need to be successful.”
