Yahoo Maps service to be shut down at the end of June

In an announcement made via a Thursday-released blog post, Yahoo has said that it plans to shutter down its Yahoo Maps service. The decision to shut down its maps site is part of Yahoo's spring cleanup of products.

Disclosing that Yahoo will shut down maps.yahoo.com at the end of June, Yahoo's chief architect Amotz Maimon said in the blog post that the company will continue to support mapping as part of Yahoo Search and other services, like search and the photo-sharing website Flickr.

The imminent shutdown of Yahoo Maps comes in the light of the fact that the service faces intense competition from Google's widely-used Maps service. Yahoo's decision to pull back Maps service will reduce the company's direct competition with Google.

Elaborating on the reason behind Yahoo's move to discontinue maps.yahoo.com site, Maimon said that the decision stems from Yahoo's efforts "to better align resources to Yahoo's priorities as our business has evolved since we first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago."

The Yahoo Maps shutdown decision follows the attempts which Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been making - ever since she took charge of Yahoo nearly three years back - to revive meaningful revenue growth for the company with a series of acquisitions and product revamps.