Jay Rossiter, Yahoo!'s Senior Vice President of its Cloud Platform Group announced that on December 31, 2014 Yahoo! will discontinue the Yahoo! Directory that birthed the company. The news was contained in a post on the company's media/press blog outlining the company's "continued product focus."

The death notice was short and to the point. In the post, Rossiter said:

Yahoo was started nearly 20 years ago as a directory of websites that helped users explore the Internet. While we are still committed to connecting users with the information they’re passionate about, our business has evolved and at the end of 2014 (December 31), we will retire the Yahoo Directory. Advertisers will be upgraded to a new service; more details to be communicated directly.