By Elton Gomes
The pioneering instant messaging application, Yahoo Messenger, will be discontinued from July 17. Verizon subsidiary, Oath announced that it would be shutting the service down. It will continue experimenting to see whether a new product may find a relevant place in the midst of domination from Facebook and other messaging apps.
Oath, however, has currently stated that a replacement for Yahoo Messenger isnt available. Were constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta), the company said.
Over the last 20 years, in total, hundreds of millions of people have used Yahoo Messenger, the company said. It added that users Yahoo ID will remain intact for services like mail and fantasy sports.
The official announcement noted that users will have six months to download their chat history. Although users can download the data to their own device, connecting it to another app might not be an option, according to the Next Web.
A brief history
Yahoo Messenger was originally launched as Yahoo Pager in 1998, and essentially was the WhatsApp equivalent of the nineties. Over the years, several chatting services such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp took over Yahoo Messengers popularity.
Launched in 1998, the iconic messenger service will shut down next month. Credit: YahooIn the summer of 2017, telecom giant Verizon completed its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo. As per the deal, Verizon combined Yahoo and AOL to form Oath, as reported by Fortune.
In the presence of several messenger apps, the shutdown of Yahoo Messenger may not affect a lot of Indian users, but the service will touch upon a certain sense of nostalgia. Yahoo will always be remembered for being the pioneer in instant messaging.
Elton Gomes is a staff writer at Qrius