YouTube founders save Delicious service

YouTube’s co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen bought the popular social bookmarking site Delicious from Yahoo, saving the service from being shut down. It’s said that this acquisition for the two entrepreneurs is because they are returning to tech under their new venture called AVOS.

In 2005 Yahoo acquired Delicious to integrate the service’s social aspects into their own web offerings. Yahoo began to struggle from increasing competition and last December went through a mjaor restructuring. Unfortunately this meant that many services would be shut down. Altavista, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Picks, Yahoo Buzz, MyM, Alltheweb, and MyBlogLog are all set to be, or have already closed down. In fact, Altavista and Alltheweb are closed, and Buzz shut down on April 21. During the transition, Delicious will continue to operate normally.

In a statement issued by Yahoo, they said: “As we have said, part of our product strategy involves shifting our investment with off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation. We believe this is the right move for the service, our users and our shareholders.”

A statement issued by Hurley said, “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”