The Uncertain Future of Delicious

Rumors circulated yesterday that the popular bookmarking service, Delicious, would be shut down by Yahoo!, who acquired the company in 2005 and changed the name from del.icio.us to Delicious. They also apparently fired the entire Delicious team. In an unexpected twist today, a post on the official Delicious Blog insists that Yahoo! wants to keep the site alive:

No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.

I had been on the fence for some time about whether or not to delete my account, mostly because I prefer to store and process my data on my own machines and host it myself, but also for privacy reasons. The seemingly eminent demise of the site yesterday was enough to prompt me to finally close my account last night. I imagine that many others may have done the same. Someone should write a simple, host-your-own bookmarking app as a substitute.