Yahoo announced Friday that it will be killing off the first service it ever offered: the Yahoo Directory. It will officially bite the dust at the end of the year.
Ars Technica reports that in January 1994, company founders Jerry Yang and David Filo created “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” a hierarchical list of websites. Two months later, the directory was renamed “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” or Yahoo.
The site is still around 20 years later and still updated. As can be expected, the directory is much more expansive than it was in 1994.
Ars Technica adds that from 2012 to present, the company has cut more than 60 products, from task management app Astrid to the Taiwanese social network Wretch. The Yahoo Directory apparently avoided the chopping block a few times, being the company’s namesake, but it has now run out of luck.
ZDNet points out that Yahoo is in an interesting financial position right now, as the company has a 16.4 percent stake in Alibaba. The massive China ecommerce company had a stellar IPO in which its stock price jumped from $68 to $90 per share. The company’s stock price has since fallen about 3.7 percent.
