Yahoo is shutting down Delicious, heralding the end of a tasty era

Del.icio.us has lived a long life -- having been around since 2003 -- but Yahoo! has confirmed the demise of the delectable bookmark service. It comes as no surprise after news of the company's recent layoff blitz, and the Delicious team has been on the list of expected victims for well over a year. It's not the only property getting the "sunset" treatment from Yahoo!, either; Yahoo! Picks, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Alltheweb, Altavista, and MyBlogLog are all going the way of the dinosaur along with it.

While it's a bit sad to see such an aged fixture of the Internet begin to fade away, it's also a sign of the times. Bookmarking services in general just don't seem to have the draw that they did back in their glory days. Browsers that sync bookmarks, whether through a built-in system or a plug-in, have taken a firm hold on the issue of multi-computer bookmarking. Social networks have become just as good at sharing links as sites that were built to simply share links. So really, mourning sites like Delicious is akin to yearning for the days when we had to install a special plug-in just to get tabs in our browsers, isn't it?

Even if it isn't, there's still the fact that it had the misfortune of becoming a property of Yahoo! -- a company that can't even keep itself relevant. So this round of layoffs, "sunsets," mergers, and scale-backs is not likely to be the last.