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Yahoo Kills Maven Networks

Carol Bartz continues to swing the axe at Yahoo, closing down weak and under-performing products at the Sunnyvale, Calif. Web giant. According to TechCrunch's Robin Wauters, the latest to go is online video advertising provider Maven Networks, which Yahoo acquired at the beginning of last year for around $160 million.

The news comes from a Maven customer who was informed last week that Yahoo will cease development on the platform and will no longer support it in 2010. Another source confirms that Yahoo has fired most of Maven's employees in a move that's being called a restructuring. The same source claims that Yahoo never even used Maven's technology for its own video properties, which is strange, considering Bartz's recent admission that Yahoo is interested in acquiring digital video startups. Among Maven's competitors were Brightcove, Ooyala and KIT Digital.

As Wauters points out, this is the third video property that Yahoo has killed in less than 8 months, after shutting down both Y!Live, a live video streaming service, and Jumpcut, an online video editing tool. However, there's always the possibility that Yahoo sells off what's left Maven to someone interested in buying it.

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »

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