EditorYahoo is continuing with its strategy of streamlining its offerings. The company is shutting down Yahoo Games, LiveText (the video messaging app), Yahoo BOSS web search platform and Yahoo Astrology. Yahoo Astrology will however remain functional in certain countries.
Coming to LiveText, Yahoo decided to shut it down because of the negative user feedback. Although it is a video chat app, users complained that there was no audio and they could only see each other type. LiveText will be pulled off by the end of March. Yahoo Games however will be shut down in the month of May.
The company will discontinue some sections of BOSS including BOSS JSON Search API, BOSS placefinder and placespotter APIs and BOSS Hosted Search. In place of this Yahoo! Will offer a new javascript solution called YPA.
Yahoo said it wants to focus on core products including Mail, Search, Sports, News, Finance, Lifestyle and Tumblr.
In an hour – long interview on PBS, Marissa Mayer (Yahoo! CEO) was asked by Charlie Rose if she sees herself leading Yahoo in the coming year.
Mayer said, “Yeah, I think that, again, like I would love to. I would love to be running Yahoo. We have a three-year strategic plan.”
When asked again about what went wrong, she said, “I think that when we look at this, we’ve rolled out a new strategic plan for the company, and we can see the turnaround. A lot of tech turnaround adds we do take five, six, seven years. I can see our strategic plan and we can see how it’s really working, and it’s 600 million mobile users, $1.6 billion of mobile video native and social. … When I came to Yahoo! in 2012, I came because I really wanted to work hard. I thought it was a great challenge.”
Mohith Agadi
