Before there was an iPhone, Android and App Store, there was Yahoo! Go. Launched in 2006, Yahoo! Go was an application offered news, mail, weather, traffic, and Yahoo! search from a mobile device. Today, Yahoo is announcing that Yahoo! Go will be shutdown on January 12, 2010.
The app seemed to be ahead of it’s time when it launched but now is useless thanks to Yahoo creating prettier, more powerful, personal content-focused apps that specialize in products, such as Flickr, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo released three versions of Yahoo! Go but hasn’t released a new version in the past year. The last iteration of the app included a mobile widget platform and was available on select Nokia and Windows Mobile devices
The reasoning behind shutting down Go is simple, says Yahoo. As Yahoo unrolls individual apps in verticals and boosts its mobile site, Go was becoming obsolete. The team that was working on Go! will now be relocated to working on the mobile site product and various apps. Yahoo recently launched mobile apps for Flickr, and Yahoo Finance.
Earlier this year, Yahoo announced a revamped Yahoo Mobile, and rolled it out in April with a new iPhone app and browser support for more than 300 devices. Now Yahoo!’s mobile homepage is now available across more than 1,900 mobile devices in 32 countries. Yahoo Mobile combines mobile search, your email, IM, and social messaging streams, and personalized Yahoo content such as news, sports, stocks, and RSS feeds, which basically replaces Go.
Below is the email that will be sent to Yahoo Go users tomorrow:
Dear Yahoo! Go user,
Yahoo! Go will be discontinued on January 12, 2010, at 12:00 a.m. PST, so that we may focus on simplifying and enhancing your future mobile Web experiences. After this date, you will no longer be able to use Yahoo! Go 2.0 or 3.0 from your mobile phone.
We encourage you to visit the new mobile homepage from your mobile browser to access an even richer, more personalized Yahoo! experience.
We appreciate your support and thank you for using Yahoo! Mobile services.
For more information and customer support, please visit the help center from your PC.
The Yahoo! Mobile team