Delicious Breaking Off from Yahoo, Not Shutting Down

Delicious on Friday denied that it was shutting down, and insisted that it was instead shopping for a home outside of Yahoo.

"We are not shutting down Delicious," the company said in a blog post. "While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive."

Delicious is currently "exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now," but the company had few other details.

On Thursday, it was reported that Yahoo would shut down several of its Web properties, including Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, MyBlogLog, and AltaVista. The news came out after MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier tweeted a link to a Yahoo presentation slide that said Yahoo would "sunset" these and other services.

On Friday, Yahoo cross-posted the Delicious blog post on its developer network blog. Blake Irving, executive vice president and chief product officer at Yahoo, also tweeted that Yahoo had been planning to get rid of Delicious for quite some time.

"Reason leaks suck? They're rarely right. This wrong one caused a shit storm. This has been the plan for months," Irving said.

When asked for comment about the slide leak on Thursday, however, a Yahoo spokesperson confirmed that Yahoo does plan "to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others."

Yahoo acquired MyBlogLog in 2007; Marcoullier is now co-CEO of social network OneTrueFan. Yahoo acquired Delicious in 2005.

On Friday, Delicious said "there's no reason to panic." The service will be maintained and the company encouraged users to keep using it. For those who want to pull their bookmarks from Delicious, the service has an export option and many services allow users to import Delicious links and tags.

"We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you," the company concluded. "Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press."

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Chloe Albanesius

Executive Editor, News

My Experience

I started out covering tech policy in DC for The National Journal, where my beat included state-level tech news and all the congressional hearings and FCC meetings I could handle. I later covered Wall Street trading tech before switching gears to consumer tech. I now lead PCMag's news coverage.

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Getting my start in DC means I still have a soft spot for tech policy; Congressional hearings can sometimes be as entertaining as a Bravo reality show, for better or worse. But PCMag is all about the technology we use every day, as well as keeping an eye out for the trends that will shape the industry in the years ahead (or flop on arrival). I've covered the rise of social media, the iOS vs. Android wars, the cord-cutting revolution that's now left us with hefty streaming bills, and the effort to stuff artificial intelligence into every product you could imagine. This job has taken me to CES in Vegas (one too many times), IFA in Berlin, and MWC in Barcelona. I also drove a Tesla 1,000 miles out west as part of our Best Mobile Networks project. Of late, my focus is on our hard-working team of reporters at PCMag, guiding and editing their robust coverage.

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