Yahoo (again) shut down some of their services, including Yahoo Games, Yahoo Livetext, regional media properties and BOSS. The main purpose of this closing, besides the fact they were unprofitable, is also to streamline the business. Through their post on Tumblr, Yahoo said the company will focus on their core consumer products: Mail, Search, Tumblr, News, Sports, Finance, and Lifestyle.
“During our last earnings call, we outlined a plan for simplifying the business and focusing on our strengths across seven core consumer products: Mail, Search, Tumblr, News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle. After a careful evaluation, we’ve decided to make the following product decisions.”
Yahoo Games site and Channel Publishing will be closed on May 13, 2016. The consumers who have done in-game purchasing or bought the applications or the game can contact the game publisher for the refund or replacement option.
“You should seek information from the game publisher of the games in which you have made in-game purchases to see what options they have for transferring your in-game purchases. We have reached out to game publishers and asked them to develop a transition plan for players in the coming days.”
Moreover, Yahoo Livetext will also be closed by the end of this month. This application allows the users to send videos without a voice, which is claimed by Yahoo as a faster video communication. Its main feature will be integrated by Yahoo Messenger.
The regional media properties service, like Yahoo Astrology, will close in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and India. Yahoo Maktoo (Arabic and English) including News, Celebrity, Movies, Style, Helwa, Sports, and Weather will shut down and the pages will redirect to the Yahoo Maktoob homepages in Arabic and English.
On the search engine side, Yahoo will shut down Yahoo BOSS and will offer YPA, a new Javascript solution for the publisher who manage their own search engine results pages.
“We are discontinuing BOSS JSON Search API and BOSS Hosted Search, as well as the BOSS Placefinder and Placespotter APIs, on March 31, 2016,” Yahoo states in the post.
Previously, Yahoo was doing the internal fixing by renting the banking advisers and forming the committee to explore the strategical possibilities for Yahoo.
The other news: Microsoft OneNote Wants The Evernote Users To Switch To Their Service