Yahoo Answers will be shut down forever on May 4th

[Nguyen Van Phuoc]

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/5/22368488/yahoo-answers-shutdown-may-4-internet-era-over-rip (archive)

Yahoo Answers will be shut down forever on May 4th​

The end of a long and storied internet era (of bad questions and even worse answers)

Yahoo Answers, one of the longest-running and most storied web Q&A platforms in the history of the internet, is shutting down on May 4th. That’s the day the Yahoo Answers website will start redirecting to the Yahoo homepage, and all of the platform’s archives will apparently cease to exist. The platform has been operating since 2005.

Yahoo, which is now part of Verizon Media Group following the company’s sale to the telecom for nearly $5 billion in 2017, announced the change at the top of the Yahoo Answers homepage. The message links to an FAQ, which details the timeline of the shutdown. Starting April 20th, the platform will no longer accept new submissions, the FAQ explains.

Users will also have until June 30th to request their data or it’ll be inaccessible after that. That includes “all user-generated content including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images,” Yahoo says, but “you won’t be able to download other users’ content, questions, or answers.”

A note sent to active Yahoo Answers members provides a little more detail as to why Yahoo is shutting down the platform, including that “it has become less popular over the years” and that the company “decided to shift our resources away” from the product to “focus on products that better serve our members.”

Dear Yahoo Answers Community,
We launched Yahoo Answers sixteen years ago to help people around the world connect and share information. With you and millions of other users, we built the best place on the web to ask and answer questions on a variety of topics, creating a community of global knowledge sharing. While we could not have been prouder of what we accomplished together, we are reaching out today to let you know that we have decided to shut down Yahoo Answers on May 4th, 2021.
While Yahoo Answers war once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed. To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content.
Starting on April 20th you will no longer be able to post any new questions or answers. However, you can still view any posted questions and answers until May 4th. On May 4th the site will be shutting down. If you would like to download a copy of your questions and answers you have posted, you can do this by signing into Your Privacy Dashboard and requesting a download. You will be able to do this until June 30th, 2021 after which your Yahoo Answers data will be securely deleted and no longer available. The closure of Yahoo Answers will not affect your Yahoo account or other Yahoo services. For further information and instructions on how to download your data, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions or copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN35642.html
Thank you for contributing to Yahoo Answers — we’re proud and honored to have helped you connect with and learn from the Yahoo community these past sixteen years. If you’d like to provide feedback, please feel free to reach out to our team at yahoo_answers_sunset@verizonmedia.com.
Sincerely, The Yahoo Answers team

Perhaps the shutdown is for the best, considering the site appears to be overrun with far-right conspiratorial garbage. The current Yahoo Answers homepage is highlighting such introspective gems in its discover section as, “Will America survive 4 years of Joe Biden?” and “Will this summer be record riots by BLM and antifa?,” as well as this instant classic, “Was Stalin right about everything?”

May all the wayward souls of Yahoo Answers now find the information they’re looking for somewhere more credible.

---

Quora will never replace the legend that is Yahoo Answers. Post your favorite Yahoo Answers screencaps/vids below.

 

[The Cunting Death]

The internet is unironically dying

Flash and Yahoo Answers were the best things about 2000s internet

 

[A_Skellington]

Truly the end of an era.
So what's gonna happen to my old Yahoo email address after this? It's unironically my main business email.

 

[Darksy DePhil]

So now Yahoo has literally nothing going for it whatsoever, except maybe a mediocre email service and Yahoo! Finances.
I know they're owned by Verizon or something now, but i honestly don't fucking know why they believe stripping so many functions away from Yahoo somehow will make the site more profitable. If anything Yahoo! was meant to be an all-purpose internet portal.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

“Will America survive 4 years of Joe Biden?” and “Will this summer be record riots by BLM and antifa?,” as well as this instant classic, “Was Stalin right about everything?”

The first two seem like fair questions and the latter seems like something someone on the moderate left would ask.

If I thought Yahoo Answers had anymore comedy gold to mine I would be sad but it is probably tapped out.

 

[Salubrious]

So now Yahoo has literally nothing going for it whatsoever, except maybe a mediocre email service and Yahoo! Finances.
I know they're owned by Verizon or something now, but i honestly don't fucking know why they believe stripping so many functions away from Yahoo somehow will make the site more profitable. If anything Yahoo! was meant to be an all-purpose internet portal.

Yahoo's home page is even more left-leaning newswise than CNN, if that's even possible. I get a kick out of it.

 

[Psychic Espeon]

I'll miss the memes that were generated from the Questions themselves.

 

[Neil]

What the fuck, Verizon? Piece of shit company.

F in chat for the website that helped me through my STEM classes in college with all those homework answers posted there.
F in chat for the future struggling STEM majors who won't be able to solve ridiculously long-winded, poorly written homework questions taken from a question bank written up in the 1980s.

 

[Toolbox]

First verizon pratically kills Tumblr, spreading the tumblrite virus to all of the web, and then they kill yahoo answers, an originator to many great memes and just general hilarity. I haven't used the service myself in years, but it should at least be preserved. It's not even getting that. What good has Verizon done in the past... ever?

 

[Instant_Pot_User]

Good night sweet prince

 

[Cat Menagerie]

Yahoo's home page is even more left-leaning newswise than CNN, if that's even possible. I get a kick out of it.

The comments sections on their articles were amazing until they took that away last year.

 

[MODUS]

So now Yahoo has literally nothing going for it whatsoever, except maybe a mediocre email service and Yahoo! Finances.
I know they're owned by Verizon or something now, but i honestly don't fucking know why they believe stripping so many functions away from Yahoo somehow will make the site more profitable. If anything Yahoo! was meant to be an all-purpose internet portal.

Yahoo doesn't stand any chance of upstaging Google even with Verizon's near-infinite money coffers. Between that and the... 'notoriety' of Yahoo Answers, it seems like Verizon is downsizing Yahoo so it may be built back up as something more focused. Presently, Yahoo is little more than a mediocre choice for receiving email and an incredibly confused remnant of the older internet.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

The comments sections on their articles were amazing until they took that away last year.

Let's hope some of these comments was archived on Archive.today and/or the Wayback Machine to remember the good old days, lol.

I know they're owned by Verizon or something now, but i honestly don't fucking know why they believe stripping so many functions away from Yahoo somehow will make the site more profitable. If anything Yahoo! was meant to be an all-purpose internet portal.

At this rate, Verizon should sell Yahoo to someone else...

 

[SIGSEGV]

F

 

[Darksy DePhil]

At this rate, Verizon should sell Yahoo to someone else...

They should sell it all to Softbank. They own Yahoo Japan, which IIRC is vastly more successful.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

It wasn't the one I was looking for but it's still good.

 

[Thumb Butler]

I thought it died at least 10 years ago.

How is Yahoo ruined?

Spoiler

By buying Tumblr

 

[NerdShamer]

So now Yahoo has literally nothing going for it whatsoever, except maybe a mediocre email service and Yahoo! Finances.
I know they're owned by Verizon or something now, but i honestly don't fucking know why they believe stripping so many functions away from Yahoo somehow will make the site more profitable. If anything Yahoo! was meant to be an all-purpose internet portal.

It's "profitable" because you won't have to dedicate someone towards maintaining it.

 

[Mediocre]

Remember what they took from you...

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Everything funny or cool about the internet is basically gone forever.