Yahoo made some big announcements during their Q2 2015 progress report – and some of this news is sure to leave a few people I know pretty disappointed. A slew of services that have a hardcore following are being phased out by the end of June 2015 – so if you’re an avid user of Yahoo’s services you’ll want to pay attention.
Goodbye Yahoo Maps!
First up – Yahoo maps is on it’s way out. Yahoo Maps was first launched eight years ago – and since then I personally know plenty of people that swear by it – however with Google, Bing and Apple investing heavily into their own maps products – Yahoo needed to make a decision if this was something worth their time and money to compete in – and it seems that it isn’t.
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.
As a Google Maps user primarily – by biggest concern here is what will occur to any Yahoo Local business listings following the removal of Yahoo Maps. This concern has been raised by several webmasters now – and hopefully we’ll have a direct answer from Yahoo about this soon. For now we’ll just have to wait and see.
Goodbye International Yahoo Media Properties!
Yahoo Music is set to close by mid-June for France and Canadian markets; with Yahoo Movies following suite in Spain. Furthermore all Yahoo Philippines media sites will be redirected to Yahoo Singapore.
Yahoo TV will close by the end of June in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Canada.
Yahoo Auto’s will close by the end of June as-well in UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Finally in early July Yahoo Entertainment in Singapore will be shut down.
Yikes No More Yahoo Pipes!
Yahoo Pipes will remain online until September 30th, 2015 – however support for it will officially end August 30th, 2015. From then on till September 30th Yahoo Pipes will remain online in read-only mode so that any developers who wish to can migrate their data.
No More Yahoo Mail for Older iOS Devices
iOS devices running iOS 4 or earlier will no longer be able to get their Yahoo Mail using the built-in Mail app on their device. Unfortunately you will have to utilize Safari and check your mail at mail.yahoo.com.