In a failed attempt to grab a substantial portion of market share from auction leader eBay, Yahoo is closing its auction doors forever. Yahoo Auction will be shut down in order to “better serve our valued customers through other Yahoo properties.”
According to comScore, eBay holds roughly a 94% share for online auctions where Yahoo falls way short at 0.2 percent.
As of June 03, 2007, new listings will be halted with the final day of bidding falling about two weeks later on June 16. After bidding has ended, a limited set of customer service features, such as ‘My Account’, will remain intact until October 29 of this year. Yahoo Auction sites based in Hong King, Singapore, and Taiwan will continue to run while the Canadian and US counterparts are closed.
Yahoo executives have said the company has too many competing products and the close of Auction falls a week after Yahoo Photo was closed. Yahoo Photo was ended to allow for a higher focus on its popular photo sharing site Flickr. It is interesting to see Yahoo closing down some services around the same time a $50B potential buyout is looming by Microsoft.
Yahoo has posted the official announcement at the Yahoo Auctions site