Yahoo has reportedly canceled its mobile travel assistant chatbot Yahoo Radar, which was billed last summer as the perfect way to plan your next vacation. The tool was an alternative to online travel websites that relied on artificial intelligence and chatbots to research trips for consumers.
In a statement to VentureBeat, Yahoo said: “At Yahoo, we are constantly reviewing and revising our product portfolio as we strive to innovate and bring users the best experiences possible … We plan to incorporate our learnings across Yahoo’s products, including Yahoo Mail.”
The report noted the app was discontinued starting in the beginning of December.
According to the report, Yahoo didn’t give specific reasons for the shutdown of Yahoo Radar, nor did Yahoo provide details as to what it learned from launching the app. In order to use Yahoo Radar, a user had to have a Yahoo email account. When the app was activated, it would scan the user’s email inbox to see if there were any upcoming trips. Details from those emails would be used to compile an itinerary for the trip.
The move to cancel the app comes at a tough time for the internet giant. Last week, Yahoo said it believes an “unauthorized third party” stole data associated with more than 1 billion user accounts in Aug. 2013. That’s in addition to the half-million customers whose data was hacked in another incident that Yahoo disclosed in September. The company believes the Aug. 2013 hack is “likely distinct” from the other incident. In November, Yahoo disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that law enforcement provided it with data files that a hacker claimed was Yahoo user data. Upon analyzing it with the help of outside forensic experts, Yahoo has said it turned out to be the company’s data.
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