Yahoo have closed down their YQL service (Yahoo Query Language) with very little notice. The YQL platform enabled users to query, filter and combine data across the web through a single query interface. The closure of this platform will affect users of datatables.org as well as developers who built features using YQL services.
The YQL service was often used by developers as an intermediary service for various things. Their endpoint services including query.yahooapis.com and weather.yahooapis.com were retired on January 3rd this year.
Yahoo closed this service with only 48 hours of notice, and developers are actively looking for replacement solutions. Yahoo have fully closed the YQL services, rather than forcing upgrades to paid accounts or similar monetisation approaches.
The Yahoo Weather API is still available, but you need to register and use the below as your new endpoint:
weather-ydn-yql.media.yahoo.com/forecastrss
There has been no official explanation as to why Yahoo has closed the YQL services, however there have been some major changes at Yahoo since the takeover by Verizon last year.
It is apparent that Yahoo has experienced a major hit in recent years. In 2008, Yahoo was offered $45 billion by Microsoft for their acquisition, but eight years later Verizon purchased Yahoo’s core business for just $4.8 billion. And just before the acquisition by Verizon, Yahoo suffered a massive data breach that exposed personal data of more than 3 billion users. It also suffered another attack that leaked the personal details of ~500 million users – effectively every single account on Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr and other Yahoo properties were compromised.