It’s official: Yahoo to sunset Vietnamese-language news site by December

The homepage of the Vietnamese version of Yahoo SHE is seen in this screenshot taken in Ho Chi Minh City on December 21, 2014.

The Vietnamese-language news site Yahoo News and four other regional services in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam are set to close by the end of this month as the erstwhile Internet giant seeks to focus on “offerings that matter most” to users.

In December, Yahoo will close “all genre-specific media sites in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam,” including Yahoo News, Yahoo SHE, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo OMG and Yahoo Entertainment, its chief architect Amotz Maimon said in the company’s Q4 2014 Progress Report, released on Friday.

Users will be redirected to the Yahoo homepage in these markets when accessing the sites, according to Maimon.

The regional Yahoo News is a news portal featuring selected news stories from that country, whereas Yahoo SHE and Yahoo OMG provide information on beauty and fashion and celebrity news and gossip, respectively.

Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Entertainment, as their names suggest, cover sports and entertainment stories.

The Q4 2014 Progress Report, published on Yahoo’s official blog, was intended to announce the final set of product changes for 2014, a year the California-based firm dedicated to investing in their strengths, which are “search, communications and digital content.”

Yahoo said it has “sunset more than 60 products and services over the past two years” to “focus on the offerings that matter most to our users.”

“This month and in Q1 2015, we will be closing some of our regional, genre-specific media sites and automatically redirecting users in these markets to the Yahoo homepage,” the report reads.

“The infinite news stream on the Yahoo homepage will feature relevant local and global content from Yahoo editorial and our regional content providers.”

The announcement on the closing of Yahoo News in Vietnam came only one day after Microsoft’s popular MSN web portal officially put its Vietnamese version online.

Besides the five regional services to be killed off in the three Southeast Asian countries, Yahoo also made some changes in other markets.

On December 18, Yahoo consolidated its regional homepages in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Chile, and redirected to the Yahoo en Español homepage.

The genre-specific media sites, including Yahoo News, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Movies and Yahoo Celebrity, in these countries will also be closed in early Q1 2015, according to Yahoo.

The regional Yahoo News and Celebrity properties in Greece, Romania and South Africa are set to shut down today, December 22.

Yahoo is also slated to put an end to several of its products, including Maktoob Forums, Yahoo Profile, Yahoo Classic Games and Yahoo Alerts.

The forum for maktoob.yahoo.com was closed on Sunday, while profile.yahoo.com will shut as of December 22, 2015.

Yahoo Classic Games, which includes Yahoo Poker, Yahoo Pool and Yahoo Bingo, will bid farewell to users as of December 31, while alerts.yahoo.com is set for retirement on January 13, 2015.

Yahoo is also reportedly closing its offices in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia by this year-end, according to Campaign Asia Pacific, a magazine covering marketing and ad industries in Asia.

The firm opened its first representative office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s southern hub, in 2007 and founded a limited company, Yahoo! Vietnam, in August 2008.

The tech company moved on to open a permanent office in the city in early 2010.

Source : http://tuoitrenews.vn/