Mike Isaac

Recent Posts by Mike Isaac

Happy Friday! Yahoo Kills a Dozen Products.

It’s Friday afternoon, which means it’s time to take out the trash.

In a quiet blog post after markets closed, Yahoo announced it will be “sunsetting” 12 of its services over the coming months, beginning as soon as today.

Among the casualties is Yahoo Axis, a rather attractive and creative search browser the company debuted just one year ago.

Also particularly relevant and perfectly timed: Yahoo is deep-sixing its RSS alerts, dovetailing exactly with the much bemoaned death of Google Reader on July 1. Users are encouraged to take up another of the company’s services, Yahoo Alerts, which relies on email to inform users of news.

Another biggie: After nearly two decades of existence, Yahoo is putting a bullet in the head of search engine Alta Vista. ’Tis a sad day for first-gen dot-com types.

To see the full list of dead products walking, go to Yahoo’s neat-and-tidy Tumblr post, here.

Friday wasn’t all doom and gloom. Yahoo also announced an update to its email service, which integrates the company’s popular Flickr photo service with Yahoo Mail. Users can more easily share Flickr-hosted photos via Yahoo Mail. It’s another move in Yahoo’s increasing efforts to integrate the company’s many services and “personalize” or tailor them to new and existing users.

I can’t really blame Yahoo for killing off a bunch of less-than-popular products. After all, CEO Marissa Mayer came in to focus on what people want and what Yahoo wants to be known for, rather than just a hodgepodge collection of mediocre products. And that whole “trimming the fat” thing seems to be working out okay for Larry Page over at Google.

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