DMOZ, one of the largest human-edited web directory maintained by a community of volunteer editors is nearing its end. The open directory project. The main page of the web site bears the following message:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: As of March 14, 2017, dmoz.org will no longer be available.
DMOZ.org to go down
The website was born in 1998 and powered the directory services of many search engines and portals. It poised itself as Yahoo rival. Soon, it was renamed to NewHoo.
In November 1998, NewHoo was acquired by Netscape. The company then renamed it to Netscape Open Directory. Just a month later, AOL bought Netscape and gained complete control over the Open Directory. That year, also saw the entry of its main competitor — Google.
With the advancement in technology, people started relying more on machine-generated outcomes rather than human energy as they believed that computers did a better job than humans. Use of the specific type of algorithms minimized errors and processed large amounts of data in short span of time with the relatively low impact of being incorrect. All these helped search engines like Google established their dominance in this field.
On the other hand, some users believe DMOZ.org wasn’t quite well curated like earlier times and neither it was good at fulfilling the requests. This might have ultimately led to the downfall of it. Besides, likely being understaffed, it was infrequently updated and poorly maintained to prove really be useful for its users. The volunteers had a big role to play in keeping the website working.
But with the passage of time, it was forgotten by marketers and searchers as a resource. Today’s announcement, however, marks the demise of the project, permanently.