14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo announced today that it will close the auctions service, after a few days since the giant portal closed another product, Yahoo Photos. This time, the closure is not caused by another similar solution owned by the company (Yahoo closed Photos because Flick is more powerful), the representatives sustaining that its users will be redirected to other products. "After careful consideration, we have decided to close down our Yahoo! US and Canada Auction sites to better serve our valued customers through other Yahoo! properties," it is mentioned in a notification published on Yahoo's page.
It seems that the two regional versions of the product, Yahoo US and Canada will be shut down on June 16, 2007 but some accounts will remain available until October 29, 2007. "US Buyer Protection Plan claims must be submitted no later than 60 days after you have been declared the winning bidder for an auction. As of May 4, 2007, the Auto Re-Submit feature and the Auctons Scheduler are no longer available for new auctions listings," it is added in the message.
However, the company will leave some regional versions of Yahoo Auctions online including Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. It is rumored that these editions of the service are the only products that managed to beat eBay, the famous company and the most powerful rival for Yahoo Auctions. Although the product will be closed on June 16, the giant portal encourages users to continue to make transactions until that date because there is no threat for their bids.
As you know, Yahoo recently closed Photos because the company decided to focus on the evolution of Flickr, a similar photo sharing service that managed to attract more users than its internal competitor did.