Yahoo! kills FareChase

The meta-search model took a blow with the shutdown of the Yahoo! owned FareChase today. TechCrunch has the story.

Here is a Google cached version of what FareChase used to look like. farechase.yahoo.com now redirects to Yahoo! Travel.

Hard to say in this case if it is a mark against the FareChase model or just another botched Yahoo! product

Yahoo sells Kelkoo for Euro 100mm to Jamplant (UK investment firm)

Yahoo! bought Kelkoo back in 2004 for Euro 475. News out late yesterday that they have sold it for Euro 100 million to Jamplant - a UK investment firm I have not heard of. This a significant loss for Yahoo! both in terms of capital losses but also in functionality. On the positive side for Yahoo because after three good years in 2007 the business lost Euro12 million. I can see the short term benefit but in the long term I think Yahoo will regret exiting meta-search. French language news story here including a table showing the turnover and losses. TechCrunch story here including English language version of the internal email.