Yahoo! Loco Ends 13 Years of History: Launched in 2011 to Compete with Google's Location
On March 12, 2024, LINE Yahoo! JAPAN announced that its local information service "Yahoo! Loco" will be terminated on Wednesday, March 27. This marks the end of a 13-year history that began in 2011.
Yahoo! Loco is a platform that allows you to search for information about your current location and the area you visit, and in 2011 it was integrated with local information services such as Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Gourmet offer Was. At that time, the spread of smartphones was accelerating, and the need to search for local information while on the move was increasing, and the demand for location information represented by Google Maps was beginning to increase.
Facility information and user-submitted photos and reviews posted on Yahoo! JAPAN Loco will be taken over by Yahoo! Maps and PayPay Gourmet and will be available after the service is terminated.
The termination of Yahoo! JAPAN Loco's service is considered a natural progression of the end of its role as it adapts to changes in technology and changes in user needs.
A reporter who was a member of the Yahoo Public Relations team at the agency at the time of the launch of the service recalls that the person in charge of Yahoo! Loco was enthusiastic about the service as "a service that competes with Google." At the time, Yahoo had a rivalry with Google's competitors.
