NewYork – Yahoo! has said it will shut down its maps site, part of a spring cleanup of products at the Web portal.
Maps.yahoo.com will close at the end of June, Amotz Maimon, chief architect at the Sunnyvale, California-based company, said in a blog post. Yahoo will still support mapping as part of other services including search and the photo-sharing website Flickr.
"We made this decision to better align resources to Yahoo's priorities as our business has evolved since we first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago," Maimon said in the post.
Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer is looking for ways to keep costs under control as she works to turn around the company she has led for almost three years. Backing off maps will help reduce direct competition with Google, seen as the leading service for the technology.
Yahoo also is paring back or ending support for other sites and services, including mail support for older versions of Apple’s iPhone operating system. The company is shuttering market-specific media properties, including Yahoo Music in France and Canada and the home page for the Philippines. In addition, it will end support for creation of Pipes, a Web-content gathering tool.bc-yahoo-maps. – Washington Post