Yahoo to shutter ancient search engine AltaVista as part of a larger mid-summer cleaning

Yahoo has announced that it will be shutting down “a few products”, including the ancient search engine AltaVista. The company has deemed 12 products unfit for service and will be ceasing support for them as early as today. Specifically, AltaVista is being shut down on July 8.

AltaVista, which the search engine company purchased in 2003 by Overture for $140 million in cash and stock, may surprise some people as still being around. After all, it was founded in 1995 and competed alongside the likes of AskJeeves, Lycos, and, of course Yahoo.

Interestingly, Yahoo had originally had planned to sunset the once prominent search engine back in 2010. This specific piece of news came through the leak of a presentation slide that mentioned Yahoo was going to sunset several of its properties, including Delicious, MyBlogLog, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, and others. The company reversed course and, up to today, the site is back online, but using its parent company’s search technology.

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The end of AltaVista is probably going to be more nostalgic than anything. After all, what some might call the “search engine wars” has all been conquered by Google, Bing, and Yahoo. AltaVista hasn’t even been innovating in the near past two decades so it’s obvious Yahoo has left it to squander and now it’s decided to just call it a day.

Another noteworthy product being scrapped by the firm includes Axis, a product billed as being a combination of search and browsing. In a sense, it was going to be Yahoo’s equivalent of the Chrome browser. It was intended to help “redefine what it means to search and browse — enabling a seamless search experience on your iPhone, iPad, and even your desktop.”

Axis obviously never really took off and this is one of the products that was created prior to CEO Marissa Mayer joining from Google.

The complete list of products closing and their end of life dates are below:

Yahoo! Axis (June 28, 2013)

If you installed the browser plug-in, it will no longer work. If you downloaded the app, it will continue to work, but won’t be actively maintained. We encourage you to use the Yahoo! Search app for iOS and Android.

Yahoo! Browser Plus (June 28, 2013)

To see all of our current developer offerings, please go here.

Citizen Sports (June 28, 2013)

You can still get all the latest sports news on Yahoo! Sports, play fantasy sports like Fantasy Football,  and stay up-to-date when you’re on the go with our new Yahoo! Sports app for iOS and Android.

Yahoo! WebPlayer (June 30, 2013)

If you’re a publisher and currently using Yahoo! WebPlayer on your site, after June 30 the Yahoo! WebPlayer won’t load. Your users will continue to be able to play media files using native browser support. You may wish to locate and remove the following line in your code:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://webplayer.yahooapis.com/player.js“></script>

FoxyTunes (July 1, 2013)

To see the latest in the music world, please visit Yahoo! Music.

Yahoo! RSS Alerts (July 1, 2013)

To continue to get the latest content that you care about, you can subscribe to Keyword News alerts at our Yahoo! Alerts and receive them via email.

Yahoo! Neighbors Beta (July 8, 2013)

You can visit Yahoo! Local Search to find out what’s going on in your neighborhood.

AltaVista (July 8, 2013)

Please visit Yahoo! Search for all of your searching needs.

Yahoo! Stars India (July 25, 2013)

To stay up on all your favorite celebrity news, check out Yahoo! India OMG!.

Yahoo! Downloads Beta (July 31, 2013)

Yahoo! Downloads will no longer support 3rd party downloads. It will continue to offer downloads of Yahoo! products likeYahoo! Toolbar  or Yahoo! Messenger.

Yahoo! Local API (September 28, 2013)

As part of this shutdown, all Yahoo! Local API documentation will also be removed from the Yahoo! Developer Network portal.

Yahoo! Term Extraction API (September 28, 2013)

We are eliminating direct access to the Yahoo! Term Extraction API and as of September 28, will require developers to go through YQL. We encourage all existing users of the Term Extraction Legacy API to migrate to YQL requests by September 28. You can use the YQL forums for any questions you might have about migrating to YQL. If you are already using the Term Extraction API via YQL, you don’t need to take any action.

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images