Yahoo Answers has been one of the most useless websites in the past recent years, I apologise for being blunt here, but these are no my own words, everyone has said so and everyone is saying so about the platform. However, the question-answer service has served users in the best of ways up until the inception of Quora and Reddit, but unfortunately, Yahoo could not hold up against its new-age competitors.
Having said that, Yahoo has recently announced to be shutting its Yahoo Answers service permanently on May 4th this year. The platform is one of the longest-running Question and Answer platform on the internet which is filled with stupid questions and even worse answers. The company has confirmed that after May 4th, anyone who types in Yahoo Answers on the address bar will be redirected to Yahoo’s home page and all data archives from Yahoo Answers will officially cease to exist.
Yahoo Answers has been operating since 2005 and since then with the rise of Quora and Reddit, its relevance has significantly gone down. Down to the point where people make memes about it and post on the platform itself. For someone looking for a credible answer to his/her question, Quora or Reddit will most certainly be the first choice.
As mentioned in a report by The Verge, users will have till June 30th to download their data from the Yahoo Answers platform because all data will be inaccessible after that date. The data includes all questions asked by the user with their respective answer list, Question’s list, images, Answers etc. Although, Yahoo has clarified that users will not be able to download other creator’s content from the platform.
Yahoo has certainly become less popular over the years and millennials still know about the service and how it has served people before the rise of Facebook and WhatsApp, but GenZ has no clue about Yahoo or Yahoo Answers, as matter of fact, this proves that the platform’s popularity has decreased over the years. This is probably the reason why yahoo has decided to shut down this service. In a Yahoo Answers member’s community, the company has pointed out a complete clarification on why it has decided to shut its service. Yahoo says that since the platform is no longer popular, the company has decided to shift its resources away from the Yahoo Answers platform and focus on products that can better serve its members.
For your information, Yahoo is now part of Verizon Media Group after a deal of USD 5 billion back in 2017.
Perhaps, we cannot exactly wholeheartedly say that we will miss Yahoo Answers but for anyone who is looking for credible answers will never ask a question on Yahoo Answers for that matter. So, I guess it is a wise decision taken by Yahoo.
