Yahoo! To Shut Down Maps Site And Some Other Services

(RTTNews) - Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) said that it will shut down a few of its services, including Yahoo Maps, as it focuses on search, communications and digital content.

The Yahoo Maps site will close at the end of June. However, in the context of Yahoo search and on several other Yahoo properties including Flickr, the company will continue to support maps. The company made this decision to better align resources to Yahoo's priorities as its business has evolved since it first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago. Amotz Maimon, Chief Architect at Yahoo said in a blog post.

In mid-June, the company will close Yahoo Music in France and Canada as well as Yahoo Movies in Spain. It will also close its Yahoo Philippines homepage and genre-specific media sites, and redirect to the Yahoo Singapore homepage.

At the end of June, It will close Yahoo TV in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Canada as well as Yahoo Autos in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

In early July, Yahoo Entertainment in Singapore will close.

Yahoo Pipes creation will not be supported as of August 30 this year. Pipes infrastructure will run until September 30, 2015 in read-only mode to help developers migrate their data.

"For developers who use GeoPlanet and PlaceSpotter APIs, we are standardizing and consolidating our offerings by retiring these APIs in Q3. The functionality provided by these APIs are available today through Yahoo Query Language (YQL) and BOSS," the company said.

In order to maintain focus on the security, speed and functionality of Yahoo Mail on the latest systems, the company said it is no longer supporting Yahoo Mail on the built-in Mail app for devices prior to iOS 5 on June 15, 2015. If customers use iOS 4 & earlier, they can continue to use Yahoo Mail on their Safari mobile browser at mail.yahoo.com.

Similarly, starting June 15, 2015, It is no longer supporting Yahoo Contacts syncing for devices prior to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. If customers use Mac OS X 10.7 Lion & earlier, they can continue to access their Yahoo Contacts through Yahoo Mail on their web browser.