Bad practice for a Yahoo web service to be unavailable for consecutive days

I recently learned of the Yahoo Placemaker web service, which sounds great.

However, when I decided to try it I saw the YDN Geo Technologies page indicates the Placemaker service has been unavailable. It's labeled "maintenance - back next week" and the link to the page about the service is disabled. The GeoPlanet Data service is similarly unavailable with the same label.

I realize there's no service guarantees for these kind of Yahoo free web services, but if a lot of people make use of them in applications is it reasonable for service to just disappear for long maintenance intervals? Can't maintenance be done in such a way as to provide better continuity?

When are the services expected to be available again? I wonder if "next week" refers to Sun 9/13, Mon 9/14, or some other day?

Thank you for any further infomation about this.