Yahoo To Fold Its Maps Page

Yahoo billboard in San Francisco,
removed in 2011.

In a telling sign of the times, Yahoo will shut its maps page at the end of June 2015. The news, initially released via a Yahoo blog post, was reported by AP and reposted in siliconvalley.com.

Yahoo's strategic rationale is its focus on generating advertising revenue. One can suppose that Yahoo Maps just didn't have enough ROI to justify continuing the service. The unspoken reason is that Google Maps profoundly benefits from the Mountain View company's search dominance. Yahoo and former Google exec Marissa Mayer knows that unpleasant rationale as well as any Yahooligan.

Marissa Mayer
(Image: wikipedia.com)

She has made a public show of moving Yahoo into "more profitable" areas, with the recent NFL deal providing Exhibit A. That's fine, but Yahoo's larger problem, which Mayer has not solved, is its inability to dominate any business category. Google owns search and video (thank you, YouTube); Amazon commands e-commerce; Facebook has corralled the friends and family networks; Apple has a private and highly lucrative mobile-savvy customer base.

Yahoo has its merits, starting with its excellent Finance site that manages to be useful for the retail investor as well as some pros. However, one gets the sense that Yahoo is increasingly bringing up the rear, with little innovation, not much pizzaz, and declining interest. I admit to some sentimentality regarding Yahoo. I've used the service for years and can recall its golden years. Those times, of course, are long gone, but the brand still resonates for me. Its allure, though, is diminishing. That's bad news for any brand, but especially one for which "ahead of the curve" is both the essence of its value proposition and its survival mantra.