Effective from 16 June, Yahoo! Auctions will no longer be available in the US or Canada but will still be in operation in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Yahoo! has as yet offered no detailed explanation for the withdrawal of this service, citing on its website on Tuesday that Auctions customers will be better served through other Yahoo! channels.
“After careful consideration, we have decided to close down our Yahoo! US and Canada Auction sites to better serve our valued customers through other Yahoo! properties.”
The last auction listing will be accepted on 3 June, with the last bid or purchase accepted on16 June.
This decision comes hot on the heels of Yahoo!’s announcement last week to shut down Yahoo! Photos, encouraging customers to move to Flickr, which the company acquired in March 2005.
The closure of Yahoo! Photos is what some market spectators would have seen as a matter of course.
Following the acquisition of photo sharing site Flickr, Yahoo! changed membership of the site, requesting users to sign in using their Yahoo! account.
With eBay accounting for a reported 94pc of the market share in online auctions in the US, according to comScore Inc, services such as Yahoo! Auctions are left with little room to compete.
However, losing out to competition from eBay may not be the deciding factor: Yahoo! could possibly have been planning on closing this service since the announcement in August of last year by both eBay and Yahoo! to co-operate on a range of services.
Financial details were not revealed by either company but Yahoo! was chosen to exclusively provide all third-party graphical ads on eBay as well as text ads on some search results pages.
By Marie Boran
