RIP, AltaVista and Google Wave; we hardly knew ye

17.12.2010
Today a lot of people are mourning the (or, as it used to be known, del.icio.us), following news that Yahoo is planning to sell or otherwise dispose of the popular Web bookmarking service

Given the frequency with which companies acquired by Yahoo are shut down or otherwise disposed of, you'd think the folks at Yahoo were wearing a black cowl and carrying a scythe. Finding out you have a message from Carol Bartz must be like your doctor telling you he found a dark spot on your X-ray.

[ Is it any wonder ? Find out how he earned the coveted title. | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, subscribe to . ]

Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick about the possibility of Delicious' demise (do note that many websites have claimed Delicious was killed, but that's not true):

It's a loss not just for the many people who used Delicious to archive links of interest to them around the Web, it's a loss for the future -- for what could have been. Five years later, people are just beginning to appreciate the value of passively published user activity data made available for analysis, personalization, and more. That could have been you, Delicious ...

It was beautiful. And now it's gone.