Yahoo to shut down Xoopit for Gmail users

Yahoo on Friday noted to users of Xoopit that the Gmail integration of its service would soon be disintegrated.

Xoopit, which aggregates media files from users' Gmail accounts, was acquired by Google rival Yahoo in late July and has since been integrated into the company's own Web mail service.

Users of Xoopit will have until November 13 to grab any media from Yahoo's servers, after which it will no longer be available. Doing this is necessary only for users who have deleted the source file from their Gmail account, as Xoopit simply copies over the media, leaving the version on Google's servers intact. Yahoo will continue to hold on to all users' data until next February to comply with its 90-day data retention policy, it said.

In Yahoo's note, the company says one of the main reasons for the shutdown of Gmail compatibility is to enable the team to focus on making a better version of its product for Yahoo Mail, which only began working with the Xoopit service in December. It also said that discontinuing resources into tools designed to improve competing Web mail providers would leave Gmail users with a "lousy experience."

Along with access to Xoopit, Yahoo is also discontinuing its Firefox add-on and Facebook integration for Gmail.

The browser add-on has let users view attachments and other media in their Gmail accounts as a file explorer--functionality that has since been replaced by some of Google's Gmail Labs add-ons. Users with the browser add-on installed could also connect with Facebook to see and view status updates from within Gmail, a feature that will also become unavailable.

Previously: Xoopit turns Gmail into a gorgeous media browser

Xoopit has organized users Gmail attachments and let them access it outside of their Web mail. The service next month will be inaccessible to Gmail users. It will be exclusively available to Yahoo Mail users, Yahoo says.

(Credit: CNET)

Corrected at 3:15 p.m.: This post misstated the month during which Yahoo Mail began working with Xoopit. It was December.

[clh22793]

sooo...they've opened up the door for someone to create an app that works with gmail. lol. Hilariously ironic.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Is this an actual Yahoo! service? Never heard of it 'til this article, and will most likely forget it in a minute after posting this comment.

[Michichael]

Never heard of it, but still waiting for yahoo to finish dying.

[unknown unknown]

I didn't even know this service existed much less had been acquired by Yahoo, but then that seems to be one of Yahoo's major failings. They acquire or build a bunch of services but never promote them, and as result most people don't even know about them until Yahoo kills them or makes a change that effects a well known service.

I suspect if there is any demand for this, I suspect an official or third party replacement will be forth coming.

[T_Hoff]

Xoopid or Stoopid?

[lissie52]

What is Xoopit? And what does it do? I have never heard of it.

[faceless128]

1) Buy something, and change it to make it less usable and less popular
2) ???
3) profit

[linuxroadwarrior]

Sounds like a case of monopolising software to me.
Monopoly in Three Easy Steps:

1. Buy software company that produces competitor compatible software
2. Make it useless to competitors
3. Let the whole world know.

[subsider34]

Actually, Yahoo recently updated it's webmail with things like less adds (yay!) and several add-ons, including Xoopit.

[magicmaster]

Never heard of it and will forget it anyway.

[yfan]

This is an absolutely ridiculous attempt by Yahoo to try to stop Gmail's assent. It's anti-competitive, anti-consumer and anti-open Internet. Yahoo is free do this of course, but it will ultimately be in their own detriment, I predict. Google's Gmail was what revolutionized the email space, and Google is not sitting by idly. Ultimately, the company that invests in open technology (Google) will win over one that buys up successful smaller companies and tries to grab everything for itself.

[hiqutipie]

Xoopit is actually a very cool & useful Addon that shows you the attachments & pictures and allows you to share them that come with mail... So its too bad that Yahoo decided not to allow Xoopit to still run its Google app but It is a Cool app...

Hang on people - it's not that simple and I see no anticompetitive evil in there:
1. yahoo buys xoopit to get the functionality in their own service
2. yahoo leaves it working on gmail for over a year
3. gmail is constantly evolving,
4. xoopit is being developed to work on yahoo mail, and probably extended in the process
5. it costs money to keep xoopit working on gmail as both evolve

You really expect yahoo to keep the new improved xoopit working with gmail, and to keep up with the changes in gmail, something that costs them money and staff-hours and brings them no benefits whatsoever?