Every day since the site’s inception, Yahoo site browsers could relive the mid-90s by visiting the Yahoo directory page. On this page, users could continue to experience Yahoo’s original appeal: providing links to the worldwide web that could be clicked on based on specific interests. It was kind of like Twitter without the jokes.
Sadly, Yahoo announced that it will retire the directory page time machine on December 31. The list was intended to direct users to sites that might answer questions they had. But after advances in search engines, the links quickly became irrelevant. Why would you trust a human to provide you a link when you could trust a crawling machine to find the most relevant one instead?
A screenshot of the Yahoo directory from 1997
The forum was given a cursory death sentence yesterday in a blog post from Yahoo senior vice president Jay Rossiter that read:
Yahoo was started nearly 20 years ago as a directory of websites that helped users explore the Internet. While we are still committed to connecting users with the information they’re passionate about, our business has evolved and at the end of 2014 (December 31), we will retire the Yahoo Directory. Advertisers will be upgraded to a new service; more details to be communicated directly.
What will the many, many people who haven’t discovered Google yet do? This was the portion of the site that gave Yahoo its name — Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. Yet another hierarchal officious oracle is now dead. Enjoy getting links to “recreation and sports” and “felines” from whoever is pulling the strings behind Yahoo’s curtain while you still can.
And take solace in the fact that, if nothing else, we’ll always have the old Space Jam site.
