On Friday, Yahoo announced (via Tumblr, which it bought in 2013), that it would be scuttling a few of its enterprises to focus on “products that our users care most about and are aligned with our vision.”
I think the translation of that is What are you buying because suddenly that’s all we’re gonna sell.
If you’re like me, then you had no idea that Yahoo! was actually an acronym. In 1994, Stanford students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a comprehensive web directory. At first they named it “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web”, but shortly changed it to “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” (If you are under the age of 20: Search engines sucked in the ’90s. Web directories like Yahoo were where it was at.)
Unfortunately, lists of interesting links collated by hand are no longer the rage, as the web is way too wide these days to make that a realistic endeavor, though Yahoo tried. As of December 31st, Yahoo will shut down its original web directory. This makes me strangely sad, though it’s obviously the way technology evolves.
This will, of course, make the acronym “Y.A.H.O.O.” about as relevant to its product as the name “Music Television” is to “MTV.”
Over the past two years, Yahoo has gotten rid of 60 of their services, including Babelfish, which I’m still protesting. Other things going away this year: “Yahoo Education” ends tomorrow, and “Qwiki” will cease on November 1st.
I see no plans to end Yahoo Answers, which is good, because they need to do way instain mother.
Via Ars Technica