Yahoo! finally announces the end of "directory search"

Yahoo! has continued to provide services until now "Yahoo! DirectoryAnnounced that it will be terminated on December 31, 2014. When the Internet began to spread explosively, it seems that the directory search that was widely used as an important tool for surfing the Internet is finished all over the world.

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Now that Google search is widespread so that we can communicate expressing "searching" as "google". However, before using a robot type search engine which is able to locate a target page by searching a page on the net using a crawler to create an index and putting in a search word, it is necessary for a search engine to be a publisher Directory type search, where service providers search sites from indexes created by registering information, was mainstream. Yahoo! is the representative.

The prototype of Yahoo! was a student at Stanford UniversityJerry YangWith Mr.David FiloMr. "Developed in 1994"Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web(A guide to Jerry and David's WWW) ", but the two who gained funds and know-how from venture capital etc. who found a business machine there, set up Yahoo! Inc., Public to the public. About 10 years since that, Yahoo! has built a position as a portal site based on search engine service.

Internet Archive'sWayback MachineIt is stored on November 20, 1996Top page of Yahoo!It is like this. You can see that categories (directories) such as "Art and Humanities", "Business and Economy", "Computer and Internet" are displayed. For the sake of clarity, images and link destinations are used by Yahoo! Japan.


When you click a category, the subcategories contained in it are shown more and more, and the link to the site registered finally is posted. Speaking of robots-type searches like Google and searching on the Internet in times when information sources such as 2channels are scarce, it was the main search method to follow these categories in this way. Just saying "Yahoo! is registered as a site" was a big status, but on the other hand, in order to find the information you want, you have to trace more links from the site you found on Yahoo! was.


In the same way that Google's information volume on the Internet explosively increases, Google with a powerful search engine appeared, and Yahoo!'s directory search boasted of prosperity went out. In recent years, Yahoo! has stopped offering directory search steadily in overseas countries, America was in the state that remains until the end.

By the way, this announcement is "Yahoo!" of headquartered in the United States. Yahoo Japan Corporation, which operates "Yahoo! JAPAN", is a joint venture company between Yahoo! and Softbank, and since it is being operated independently from Yahoo! overseas, the Yahoo! directory that is in the Japanese version "Yahoo! Category"The service will be continued without being affected by this case.