Yahoo Realizes Microsoft Doesn't Care About Design; Closes Yahoo Design

Ok, a bit of fun in the title, shoot me. Information Aesthetics (IA) is reporting that the entire Yahoo Design team has been fired and the project closed. IA also notes that all of the design and innovation teams at Yahoo have been closed. The Yahoo Design site no longer loads, it redirects to 'next.yahoo' which apparently hasn't updated yet since some of the employees listed in the footer have also been fired.

My guess is that they will spread out the design/creativity functions into the brands that remain (mail, maps, etc.) instead of having separate groups. I've seen this before and while it certainly lowers the cost of maintaining another group, the ability to work together to create synergies in innovation company-wide suffers.

You can view the former work of the team on the Yahoo Design blog.

Update: Sam Gustin at Portfolio has confirmed the Design Group closure.