San Francisco — The Delicious saga continues… Recently, when Yahoo revealed that it was ready to wash its hands of Delicious, panicked users began looking for alternative places to send their cloud bookmarks. Seizing the opportunity, global search engine leader Google over the weekend debuted a new Delicious migration tool for Google Bookmarks, as it aims squarely at fans of Yahoo’s bookmarking service, to give people who were scared of the demise of Delicious a safe haven for their meticulously curated links.
Delicious, which Yahoo acquired in 2005, provides users with a way to share Web bookmarks and discover new, interesting websites. But, a couple of months back Yahoo gave many people a scare when reports emerged in December that Yahoo was going to “sunset” the service — a fancy way of saying it will kill Delicious — after a number of leaked slides from an internal Yahoo presentation hit the Internet. The slide was posted on Twitter by Eric Marcoullier, who cofounded blog social network MyBlogLog, another service listed in the “sunset” column.
Delicious, however, responded promptly and said there was nothing to worry about — the service was still being maintained and your bookmarks did not need to be rescued from a burning building. But the arrow has slipped the bow, and Google’s newly unveiled service will come as a respite to Delicious users who had been worried that an abrupt end to the services could see them lose all their data.
Never seems to miss an opportunity, Google has finally decided to trumpet the availability of a Delicious to Google Bookmarks importer. The new and effortless Google Bookmarks importer takes your Delicious login credentials with either an existing Yahoo ID or Delicious ID (or lets you use a one-click OAuth button) to import all your bookmarks and tags. And whatever you have bookmarked on Delicious instantly integrates seamlessly with your already existing Google Bookmarks links.
Delicious users can now visit the page, pop in your credentials, and move everything quickly and effortlessly.
Moreover, considering Google’s rather broad reach as a company, the importer is likely more than just a friendly bid for more Google Bookmarks users. Google launched Google Bookmarks in 2005 as a rival to Delicious, but it has never been a huge hit or a money maker — for the company.
Besides, this is not the first time Google has made overt overtures to Yahoo services users. Last May Google had attempted to tempt in some Delicious users by launching a rival site, “Lists for Bookmarks,” a more social feature for bookmarking. Lists empowered users to copy all their bookmarks into lists in order to share publicly, but it never seemed to gain the traction Delicious did. Nonetheless, it is definitely a direct stab at Yahoo’s bottom line.
According to Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell, the move might be a way to grab more Google Bookmark users. But put aside all the Machiavellian maneuvers, admittedly, Google’s importer is a pleasure to use and will likely be a good fit if you are a user of other Google apps, such as Reader or Gmail. Here are some screenshots:
An interesting side note: At the time of Yahoo’s acquisition, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter was still a Google employee, but has since moved on to found stealth startup Tasty Labs.