14 DAY TRIAL // Housekeeping operations at Yahoo are in full throttle and yet another important service is being shut down in the coming days. Starting with March 11, 2010, Yahoo Tech will be shut down, content and traffic being redirected to Yahoo! News' Technology section.
In a closure notice posted a few days ago on Yahoo! Tech's main page, the company announced that all incoming visitors on the tech.yahoo domain would automatically be redirected toward Yahoo's news section.
Some of Tech's most useful and read content, mainly Ben Patterson and Chris Null's technology blogs, will be moved to its news section archive. The two authors will also join the News staff, but with unknown roles, since the News section is not fit to accommodate bloggers, currently displaying only feeds and news from wire services.
The “largely inactive” blogs hosted on the service, along with user profiles and saved data, will be deleted after the closure date.
In a statement for Paid Content, a Yahoo spokeswoman said that the company decided to no longer operate Yahoo! Tech because of “increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others [as part of its effort] to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers.”
After shutting down Jumpcut, Farechase, SpotM, Bix, Maven, Paid Inclusions and GeoCities, Yahoo! continues to clean house and distance itself from service black holes in an attempt to improve its financial results.
The company recently sold Blo.gs to Automattic (undisclosed sum), Zimbra to VMWare (undisclosed sum) and HotJobs to Monster.com ($225 million), continuing to build upon its shaky financial status. Rumor has it that other services like Games, Kids, Health, Travel, Small Business and Shopping are also expected either to be shut down or sold.
Following the disastrous 2009 Q1 and Q2 financial reports, Yahoo! started shedding some of its expandable services and since then began seeing serious improvements in its financial status in Q3 and Q4.
A memo from Carol Bartz in early 2009 said that the company was “assembling a list of products that we are embarrassed about for various reasons so we can make the important decision as to whether we fix them or discontinue them.”