Yahoo sells Delicious to YouTube founders

We’re told Yahoo will continue to operate Delicious until around July, whereupon it will be incorporated into Chen and Hurley’s new company, AVOS. Delicious users are being asked to log in and provide permission for their information to be transferred to the new owner.

This development comes after months of uncertainty over the future of Delicious following an announcement in December that Yahoo was looking to sell or “sunset” the product. In the meantime, swathes of users have jumped ship by moving their bookmarks over to other services such as Pinboard or Springpad.

Happy Cog founder Jeffrey Zeldman told us: "Although, like a lot of people, I've switched to and am happy with Pinboard (http://pinboard.in/u:zeldman), I'm delighted that Delicious will continue and glad Yahoo found a buyer with sufficient resources to maintain, enhance, and expand it.

“As a respecter of web ecosystems and communities, I have mixed feelings about the way the thing went down. It feels as if the community that loves Delicious was manipulated by Yahoo into fearing its imminent demise as a strategy for a bidding war. My feelings are unfounded and may be unfair - I'm not saying Yahoo deliberately released information it then pretended to be embarrassed about. But fair or unfair, I can't quite shake my suspicions.

“My agency, Happy Cog, was the first to publicly offer to rescue Delicious when the news leaked, and we did that without knowing all the business details about Delicious. Like a lot of people, we just didn't want to see another great internet community die because the company that bought it didn't know what to do with it. It's all worked out for the best, though; what matters now is what the new owners do with Delicious."

Web guru Simon Collison was also pleased by the news. "I'm happy to see that Delicious has been picked up, and I know a number of people who have loyally stuck with it,” he told us. I think many of us feared another Magnolia moment, but it looks like that's been averted.

“That said, Delicious urgently needs some TLC. Personally, I moved over to the excellent Pinboard service a few months ago and I haven't looked back.

“I guess my main desire is that my bookmarks (and all my personal data across the internet) remains portable, and that I never find myself tied to a specific service. Competition is healthy, and content should always be orbital around me."