Yahoo To Sunset AltaVista, Axis, RSS Alerts, and Nine Other Products, Some As Soon As Today
Yahoo under Marissa Mayer is taking a page from her old employer, Google, and sunsetting 12 products, with some starting as soon as today. Included are AltaVista and other search products …
Context & Ripple Effects
Yahoo had already scheduled an earlier round of product closures for April 2013, explicitly framing the cuts as a way to sharpen its focus. The new list extends that portfolio pruning into search and information-access tools, including AltaVista, Axis and RSS Alerts.
First-order effects
- Users of AltaVista, Axis and RSS Alerts lose Yahoo-operated access points and must shift their search, browsing or alert routines elsewhere as the services close.
- Yahoo reduces the number of products it must operate, support and maintain, making its narrower product focus more explicit.
Second-order effects
- The closures remove Yahoo-branded alternatives from the search and alerting choices available to their users, concentrating attention on the services that remain in those categories.
- Yahoo’s remaining products become a clearer test of its focus strategy: products outside that set no longer benefit from the company’s distribution or maintenance.
Third-order effects
- If repeated portfolio cuts become the operating model, large web companies will increasingly treat long-tail standalone tools as liabilities unless they reinforce a smaller set of access surfaces.
- The move points toward competition organized around fewer, more integrated consumer entry points rather than maintaining every legacy search or information product.
The trend: Yahoo is consolidating a broad legacy web portfolio around a smaller set of products it considers central to its focus.