Yahoo announced on Friday that some of its services are going dark on December 31, 2014 including Yahoo Directory, Yahoo Education and Qwiki. The decision was made as part of the company's plans to redirect its resources to other products and services.
The tech giant said it would officially retire these services by end of the year, which makes it another addition to the more than 60 products that the company has closed in the past two years.
"Yahoo was started nearly 20 years ago as a directory of websites that helped users explore the internet," senior vice president of Yahoo's cloud service Jay Rossiter stated in a blog post. "While we are still committed to connecting users with the information they're passionate about, our business has evolved."
Along with Directory, the company also has plans to shut down Yahoo Education and Qwiki. Yahoo Education is the search engine's portal for education services, while Qwiki is an app used to create clips from videos through a mobile device. Techcrunch reported that Yahoo Education will be closed on Sept. 30 followed by Qwiki on Nov.1.
According to CNET, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is leading a shift of the company's resources to focus on "new digital media experiences." Services such as Sports and Finance are being improved to cater to the audience's changed expectations. Rossiter explained that ending support for less relevant products will help the company use resources where success is guaranteed.
