Astrid is a fantastic to-do-list app that is intuitive and powerful, with 4 million subscribers. Yahoo! bought Astrid in May and immediately announced they would refund people's money if they had paid for the full version of Astrid. Now they are saying they will be shutting it down entirely starting August 5.

When I first heard Yahoo! had acquired Astrid, I thought they might begin charging a subscription fee, or start advertising on it, or they might merge it into some existing Yahoo!-owned app that does the same thing. Instead, they're shutting it down completely. Most bizarrely, I got an e-mail from Astrid explaining this and linking me to four other competitors who all offered easy ways to import my Astrid data into their apps.

How does this make sense? Yahoo! must have paid millions of dollars for Astrid - and they turn around and close it down. It had 4 million subscribers, so clearly it had the potential to be a moneymaker. Were they interested in the developers, not the product? Were they trying to destroy a competitor? Is it some kind of tax write-off?

I'm confused, and have no idea where to look for the answer. Reddit, can you explain it to me?