Yahoo is killing off the Yahoo News Digest app. This was a fantastic little app that eschewed bells and whistles in favor of being simple and easy to use. And it's going away. We blame Verizon, which recently completed its acquisition of Yahoo for $4.5 billion. The suckers.
Yahoo hasn't done much right over the past few years, but Yahoo News Digest was a rare highlight in a maelstrom of cruddiness. You know, like that whole saga where 1 billion users had their data stolen. And now, with little fanfare, Yahoo is killing off its News Digest app.
An Impassioned Obituary to Yahoo News Digest
As first noted by Dan Frakes on Twitter, Yahoo News Digest is no more, with Yahoo shuttering the app. The Yahoo News Digest team signed off by announcing, "we will not be creating any new digests as of June 30," before adding, "We've loved serving you guys all these years".
Abhimanyu Ghoshal at The Next Web wrote an impassioned obituary for Yahoo News Digest, and he makes some great points. There's a trend for apps capable of doing everything, but some of the best apps available are those that do just one thing very well. And without much fuss or bother.
Yahoo News Digest was one of those apps, delivering news in a simple and straightforward way. Perhaps it was too simple and straightforward. Which meant it never quite become popular enough to survive the move to Verizon. Still, seeing Yahoo's best app being culled is disappointing.
Yahoo News Digest Was Surplus to Requirements
Yahoo feels like a spent force with little going for it. But then Verizon has just paid $4.5 billion to acquire its assets, so perhaps not. It's unfortunate that Verizon has deemed Yahoo News Digest as surplus to requirements, but this won't be the last Yahoo property to go bye-bye.
Are you a fan of Yahoo News Digest? If so, are you sorry to see it being killed off? Will you be using Yahoo's Newsroom app instead? Or do you need another app offering a snapshot of the day's news in a digestible format? Please let us know in the comments below!
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