Earlier today, popular todo list manager Astrid was bought by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Is giving Astrid’s 4 million users 90 days to continue using the service and to export their todo lists. The ability to purchase a premium account has been permanently suspended. According to the original announcement, refunds will be given out to those who purchased an Astrid service.
It’s a shame that such a great service was acquired and then shut down. I really enjoyed Astrid. In fact, Astrid was the only todo list manager that really stuck with me. I guess for now I’ll go back to paper and maybe give Wunderlist another go.
I can’t help but feel like I should blame Yahoo! for this. Lately, Yahoo! has been shutting down some of their services in order to ‘trim the fat’. This has been happening ever since Marissa Mayer , whom I have a great deal of respect for by the way, joined the Yahoo! team. While I believe that this is an overall good goal for Mrs.Mayer, I’m not sure that it’s enough. Yahoo! isn’t exactly known for its great services and innovations. While the acquisition of Astrid might mean that Yahoo! will be releasing their own todo list manager, or incorporating it into one of their products, I don’t think that it will be quite as good as Astrid was. Had it been any other company, I don’t think I would be as disappointed since at least Astrid would have a future. As I see it, Yahoo! is on life support, and we just need to pull the plug before they kill anything else that people love.
The Boardman Perspective 