Yahoo to Stop Go Mobile Portal

Yahoo Go, Yahoo’s mobile application service, will be shuttered on January 12, 2010. The service has been in operation since 2006. The portal enabled users to access Yahoo services like e-mail, search, contacts, calendar and photos, from mobile devices, as well as web enabled TVs and PCs. Version 2.0 of Yahoo Go was launched in 2007 in a move with HTC to offer the service on Windows Mobile devices.

Yahoo has recently begun to re-focus it’s mobile offerings into creating Yahoo apps, like Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Fantasy Football, for the iPhone and other mobile devices, and the Yahoo for Mobile browser also is getting more attention from the company. Yahoo will advise Go users to point their browsers at m.yahoo.com instead.

Although it was fairly innovative for 2006, Go has reached its pull date. The smartphone era has ushered in better mobile browsers and third party applications which largely make the service obsolete, if not redundant. As Microsoft’s Bing and Google both eat away at Yahoo’s share of the search market, Yahoo is looking for ways to streamline their operations. The Go move follows the shutting down of Yahoo’s GeoCities site last month. I wonder how many more Yahoo services will be shutdown.