Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
Less than six months after shutting down one of its services, Yahoo has announced that it would no longer operate Yahoo Answers, one of the longest-running and most storied web Questions and Answers platforms in the history of the internet.
The tech giant stated that the services would cease to operate from May 4. Users would be redirected from the Yahoo Answers website to the Yahoo homepage and all of the platform’s archives will apparently stop existing.
The platform has been operating since 2005 but its popularity and use has waned during the rise of competitive platforms like Reddit, Quora, and other internet hangouts.
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, adding that from April 20, the platform will no longer accept new submissions.
Users will also have until June 30 to request their data or it will be inaccessible after that. Yahoo noted that this includes “all user-generated content including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images.”
However, Yahoo said “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.”
The statement
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 was 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 honoured 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 [email protected].
Sincerely, The Yahoo Answers team
Follows Shutdown of Yahoo Groups Last Year
Business Post had reported that Yahoo closed its social media platform, Yahoo Groups, last December after almost 20 years of operations.
Yahoo Groups, which was aimed to help users stay connected to their community and friends, has seen a steady decline in usage over the last several years.
