The World Of Yahoo

The World Of Yahoo has shut down its five-year-old Indian news aggregator website Yahoo News, citing that its readership was falling due to “drastic cuts” in its advertising revenue. The website had only one staff member to run it.

The website, which was launched in 2011, shut down on Monday without any prior notice to its employees, leaving them to look for jobs in other websites that are catering to digital news and lifestyle. Its content will be re-posted on Yahoo India.

“Yahoo India believes that over the last five years, with the amazing support of the Indian readers, Yahoo News has grown to be an indispensable news source in the market,” said Toshi Maruta, Managing Director, Yahoo India in an official statement.

Yahoo mail also took to its website to communicate the news to its users. “I am very sad to share that this is the last post on Yahoo News. I will be moving on to the new role of Senior Director Product Strategy at Yahoo,” said the former Yahoo News executive.

Yahoo news is one of the many aggregators in India which have struggled to find an audience in the digital space, forcing them to cut down their advertisements in a bid to survive.

Many have also shut down after failing to attract enough readers to their websites.

“Two years ago, we were the number one in digital reach on a monthly basis. But last year, I don’t think we were the number one in terms of click throughts or even page views,” said Shashi Kumar, a former Yahoo India employee.

The World Of Yahoo.com also published its own e-magazine, which was shut down.

The website also featured Yahoo’s in-house Android and iOS apps.

“The next chapter of Yahoo is now beginning, and I am very excited to lead it,” Maruta said in the statement.

Maruta will continue to lead Yahoo’s desktop and mobile experiences in India.

Last week, Facebook announced that it was shutting down four of its Indian services. The services, including Baby Center, Liked by Mom, the Facebook page and the Facebook application for Android, were down within hours of the announcement.

Yahoo announced in October 2015 that it would lay off around 800 employees at its Sunnyvale and New York offices.

The Sunnyvale office, which was facing closure, was shut down in November 2015 and the New York office was shut down in January

What About Yahoo.com?

There has been a long speculation that Yahoo.com will also be shut down. However, the official statement from the company has only said that Yahoo.com will see changes in the near future.

In April 2015, Yahoo filed a patent lawsuit against Facebook accusing it of copying some of its patents, Yahoo was Facebook’s primary source for its advertisements and had used the latter’s platform to sell web banners.

The lawsuit sought damages of “over $250 million” from Facebook. Facebook, however, filed a motion to dismiss Yahoo’s lawsuit in June 2015.

In March, Yahoo bought the MGNial Group, which owns majority stake in Yahoo.com, domain.com.co, yahoo.ca, yahoo.co.jp and yahoo.de.

A year ago, Yahoo had bought some office space in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale for about $130 million, and was moving its people there from their office in New York.

Was it the right decision? What are your thoughts on the closure of Yahoo News?

What About Yahoo Mails?

Yahoo Mail’s Subscription revenues are not what it once used to be, and now stands at less than $100 million.

More than 80% of the revenue of the business is generated through advertisements. Yahoo Mail has not seen any subscriber growth in many quarters, and Yahoo plans to launch a new version in the coming months.

Are There Plans to Launch a Yahoo Search Engine?

Yahoo has owned the ‘y’ domain since 2003, and since then Yahoo.com has been the primary search engine in India. However, its founder Jerry Yang has said that it is not a priority for the company.

In its last earnings call, Yahoo’s chief executive Jerry Yang said, “We’re currently focused on building the exciting content and product portfolio for mobile, including our core search, Yahoo Sports, Finance and Real Estate products as well as the exciting opportunities in mobile advertising and analytics.”

Besides, the company had plans to monetize the main Yahoo search portal by creating a mobile version of it. But since it is no longer considered as a core business, the company is not actively pursuing it.

However, it is not difficult to understand the message from Yahoo’s India team. Many analysts feel that Yahoo has suffered the most in India after Microsoft abandoned its search engine Bing, which was built for India.

What does this mean for Indian Internet users?

Well, if you are a Yahoo user, and are not bothered about the brand, then there is no change. But if you are searching for ‘Jerry Yang’s favorite soda’ on Yahoo, or searching for funny pictures, you may have to change your search options.

For Yahoo, this move is likely to ensure the survival of the brand in the face of mounting pressure from investors to sell the company to a big-name investor.