It’s probably not a surprise to you at all. Yahoo Messenger, now an old dog of 20 years, will be shut down on July 17, as announced by Yahoo on Friday. New holding group Oath gave no reason on retiring the once-popular instant messaging platform.
The move was on the back of Oath shutting down another oldie – AOL Instant Messenger last year.
Yahoo said in statement that it is “focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.”
Oath revealed that at its peak, Yahoo Messenger had 122.6 million users. However, the rise of other messaging and social network apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and Telegram have caused the aging messaging service to decline in popularity.
By the way, if you have important information stored in your Yahoo Messenger chats, you can down your chat history on the downloader request site. Login with your Yahoo ID. Yahoo is allowing this feature for the next six months.
Your Yahoo ID will still work for other Yahoo products like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Fantasy, etc., after the retirement of Yahoo Messenger.
There isn’t an immediate replacement for Yahoo Messenger, at least from Yahoo’s stable, but the company suggests Yahoo Squirrel – an invite-only group messaging app currently in beta. You can request an invite at squirrel.yahoo.com.
I have found memories of Yahoo! Messenger in its heyday, how about you?
