It has been a great journey since Yahoo first created Yahoo Pager, but as soon as July 17, Yahoo Messenger will cease to function after a 20-year run.
“As the communications landscape continues to change over, we’re focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs,” stated the company about the closing of the services.
Surviving only six months after the end of his brother service, AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo Messenger faced fierce competition from more popular Messaging apps that rose to stardom such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and Google’s Hangouts.
The news of the death of Yahoo Messenger didn’t come alone. The same day Yahoo’s parent company, Verizon, announced the retirement of their CEO, Lowell McAdam, and his replacement in Hans Vestberg, former Ericsson boss.
With the last summer’s $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo, Verizon created a new media conglomerate named Oath, merging Yahoo properties with AOL. In the scheme of things, it’s only natural for Yahoo to consolidate their portfolio of products with the discontinuity of Messenger even though they don’t have an immediate replacement.
“There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger. We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta),” said Yahoo in a blog post.
The Messenger user can download the history of messages in the upcoming six months, after that any sign of the existence of the app will be a memory. You can download your message history here: https://messenger.yahoo.com/getmydata.
