Yahoo has decided that its gavel has had enough. The company recently posted an announcement on its web site that it’s US and Canada Yahoo Auctions will be shut down from June 16 this year as the competition from eBay is just too great.
With market share dwindling at a mere fraction of one percent, Yahoo Inc. has told users it will close its online auction service for North America next month, signaling the Internet powerhouse’s intention to focus on more profitable endeavors as it tries to snap out of a financial malaise.
This comes soon after the Yahoo announcement that it is going to be closing the Yahoo Photos and encouraging consumers to move to the Yahoo! owned Flickr. This is the second service the world’s most visited Internet Media Company has set to retire.
According to a message on the site that reads:
“After careful consideration, we have decided to close down our Yahoo US and Canada Auction sites to better serve our valued customers through other Yahoo properties.”
The service will no longer accept new auction lists from June 3. The last day to bid or buy goods and services on the auction site is June 16.
The decisions to close the auction and photo services provide the latest indication that Yahoo is reassessing the value of its far-flung Web properties in an attempt to reverse a revenue slowdown that has disappointed investors.
Yahoo is encouraging users of its original photo service to embrace Flickr, offering ways for users to transfer their photos to competing services, including Shutterfly, Photobucket, Kodak Gallery and Snapfish.
Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Network Division, said in a company statement: “We are making great strides in our ongoing efforts to align Yahoo’s resources and focus on core strategic priorities.”
After stumbling through much of 2006, Yahoo opened the first three months of this year with an 11 percent decline in its profit. The slowdown helped spur speculation last week that Microsoft might try to buy Yahoo and forge a business partnership as both companies try to combat online search leader Google.
Yahoo attracted less than 0.2 percent of the U.S. traffic to auction sites during the week ended May 5 compared with nearly 85 percent for the longtime market leader eBay, according to Hitwise.
“It comes with little surprise given Yahoo’s advertising relationship with eBay, and eBay’s massive dominance of the auction category,” Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott wrote in a blog post.
A year ago, eBay and Yahoo announced a strategic alliance to cooperate on a range of services in their core U.S markets.
As of Friday, May 4, 2007 certain Yahoo auction features were discontinued. A limited set of customer service features and account tools will be available through October 29.
The latest closure applies to Yahoo’s U.S. and Canadian auction sites. Still open for business are Yahoo auction sites in three Asian markets — Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
A Yahoo spokesman was not immediately available to comment on whether the planned closing of the two sites was part of a broader plan to pare back slow-growing services.