Yahoo closing online auctions site By Jonathan Thaw Bloomberg News Published May 9, 2007, 4:48 PM CDT Yahoo! Inc., owner of the most-visited U.S. Web site, will close its online auctions site in the U.S. after it failed to match the popularity of EBay Inc. The site will stop taking listings on June 3 and the last day of bidding will be June 16, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said yesterday on the site. Yahoo will continue to run auction sites in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The closure comes less than a week after Yahoo said it would shutter the Yahoo Photo service to focus on its faster-growing Flickr site. Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel reorganized Yahoo last year into three units to make it a nimbler competitor to Google Inc. Yahoo executives have said the company has too many competing products. Yahoo said it plans to close the site to "better serve our valued customers through other Yahoo products." EBay had more than 60 million U.S. visitors in March, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, which tracks Web use. Bidz Inc. was second with 1.76 million users. Yahoo's site had fewer than 330,000 visitors, the minimum threshold that Nielsen uses for its measurements. Shares of Yahoo fell 19 cents to $30.22 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. They have climbed 18 percent this year. EBay, up 16 percent in 2007, rose 65 cents to $34.99 today. EBay's size makes it difficult for other auction sites to gain traction, according to investors such as Rachel Wakefield at Coldstream Capital Management in Portland, Oregon. San Jose, California-based EBay runs auctions and hosts online stores, where merchants can sell their goods. Last year, EBay raised fees to reduce clutter on its site and drive customers to its auctions. That meant more auction listings resulted in sales. First-quarter net income climbed 52 percent to $377.2 million on revenue of $1.77 billion. --With reporting by Danny King in Los Angeles.