Yahoo to shut down LiveText, Games and more

After the layoffs, Yahoo’s next announcement reveals its decision to shut down some of its products including LiveText, Yahoo Games, Yahoo Astrology and more. In a Tumblr post, Yahoo writes that, “During our last earnings call, we outlined a plan for simplifying the business and focusing on our strengths across seven core consumer products: Mail, Search, Tumblr, News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle. After a careful evaluation, we’ve decided to make the following product decisions.” Yahoo Games site and publishing channel will be discontinued from May 13 2016. By the end of this month, the company has planned to pull the plug on LiveText. “Livetext allowed us to experiment with new user experiences and features to drive innovations across our products. We plan to incorporate the learnings and features into Yahoo products including Yahoo Messenger, our core messaging platform,” explains Yahoo. In the coming weeks, it is also expected to shut down regional media properties. Yahoo Astrology will close in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and India. Yahoo Maktoob (Arabic and English) including News, Celebrity, Movies, Style, Helwa, Sports and Weather, will shut down and the pages will redirect to the Yahoo Maktoob homepages in Arabic and English. “We are discontinuing BOSS JSON Search API and BOSS Hosted Search, as well as the BOSS Placefinder and Placespotter APIs, on March 31, 2016,” Yahoo states in the post. A report last month had hinted at Yahoo shutting down some of its digital magazines as the struggling online pioneer’s latest reorganization plan. In a blog post, Yahoo global editor in chief Martha Nelson announced plans to start phasing out some operations as it focuses on connecting with readers for news, sports, finance and lifestyle.