[ad_1]
Yahoo Groups, one of the last vestiges of the old Yahoo web properties, will close the December 15, 2020, when Verizon plans to take the groups.yahoo.com website offline forever.
Verizon, which bought Yahoo in 2017, announced the decision today in emails sent to Yahoo Groups users and a message posted on the Yahoo Groups website.
Today’s announcement marks the end of the road for one of the largest Internet message board systems of its time.
However, despite its long history, the Yahoo Groups service, which launched 19 years ago in 2001, had fallen by the wayside over the years and slowly lost most of its user base that was once It went massive to newer services like Reddit, Google Groups, and Facebook Groups.
Verizon, which never had a plan to reactivate the service, cited “a steady decline in usage over the past few years,” and began phasing it out last year.
An initial two-phase process was announced in October 2019.
At the time, Verizon announced that users would no longer be able to create new content (discussions) on the site after October 21, and the company planned to permanently remove all content from previous users on December 14, 2019.
Mysteriously, Verizon also removed any attempts by users to archive their past discussions.
While Verizon’s 2019 measures allowed the Yahoo Groups website to stay alive, the site was never the same again.
Users lost the ability to post new discussions on Yahoo forums, but they still had the ability to create new groups and have massive email conversations with all members at once.
With its two decisions, Verizon effectively transformed Yahoo Groups from a message board to a mailing list, a decision in which many saw the writing on the Yahoo Groups wall and expected the service to finally shut down in 2020. or beyond.
That final announcement came today.
According to Verizon, starting today, Yahoo Group users won’t even be able to create new groups.
Only email functionality will be left active, but it will also be disabled after December 15, 2020, when Verizon plans to shut down the entire Yahoo Groups infrastructure and end an era for many of the early Internet users.
Meanwhile, Verizon is encouraging leftover Yahoo Group members who didn’t leave the site last December to organize and move to new message boards and hangouts before emails start to bounce.
