back to article Yahoo! Kills! The! Messenger!

Yahoo! is set to discontinue its Messenger app in just over a month's time. The remaining bits of the Purple Palace confirmed on Friday that, as of July 17, the service will be no more. "Until then, you can continue to use the service normally," Yahoo! says. "After July 17, you'll no longer be able to access your chats and …

  1. chivo243 Silver badge
    WTF?

    Yahoo!Chat!Quit!Working!??

    ?What, it quit working long ago, (on macOS anyway) I switched to skype to keep in touch with the missus.

    Yes, showing my age here.

    1. Zippy's Sausage Factory
      Meh

      Re: Yahoo!Chat!Quit!Working!??

      Yeah, me too. I was under the impression it died two years ago, which is why I uninstalled it and moved to Viber.

  2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Contact me on Oath Squirrel

    will be said by nobody

    1. brotherelf
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Contact me on Oath Squirrel

      Wasn't Oath Squirrel one of those top-secret Pentagon projects during the Cold War?

      1. FrankAlphaXII

        Re: Contact me on Oath Squirrel

        Yeah, it was a TS//ECI Special Access program that was run by Royal Cape and whatever the Special Collection Service was called at the time that used genetically modified "super" rodents to break into embassies to plant listening devices. It wound up being spun down when most of the interesting embassies started using cats as a counterintelligence measure.

        1. A. Coatsworth Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Contact me on Oath Squirrel

          Interestingly, CIA passed most of the research data to MOSSAD, who went on with the program. They wisely decided to replace squirrels with lizards, which adapt better to the Iran weather.

  3. Martin Summers Silver badge

    Fond memories of Yahoo Messenger being the first IM client I ever used in the late 90's. Along with Yahoo chat rooms and a Yahoo email address it opened up the world to me when the web was still exciting. Its a shame Yahoo went downhill but they belong to that era now.

    1. Barry Rueger

      Even fonder memories of the time, before AltaVista and Google, when Yahoo! was the go-to place to find Web sites, the preferred directory.

      Yahoo!'s strength was that every listing was approved by a real human, eliminating a lot of utter dreck.

      Instead of gaming SEO to get a high ranking you actually had to submit your site to Yahoo! and hope they accepted it.

      1. Simon Harris

        I remember back in the early days of hand curated web indexes some of the entries were quite humorous.

        When many of the early sites with pictures of naked ladies consisted of images brazenly scanned from Playboy, Penthouse, and the like, I remember one site being listed with a comment something like 'Collection of copyright violations', and the next one in the list being 'More copyright violations'.

  4. andrewj

    YaWho ?

  5. fidodogbreath

    Still ! with ! the ! exclamation ! points ! on ! every ! Yahoo ! story ! eh ?!?

    1. King Jack
      Headmaster

      Psst! you don't put a space before an exclamation mark. English 101.

      1. fidodogbreath

        Psst! you don't put a space before an exclamation mark. English 101.

        Another item from the English 101 syllabus is that the first word of each sentence is capitalized. That sort of undermined the pedantic grammar Nazi claim of authority.

        1. Mr F&*king Grumpy

          Grammar Gremlins

          Evidence suggests, that El Reg has a bakground script running to ensure that any pedantic grammer Nazi alert has too include at least one grammer mistake wrong punctuation and several speling errors.

          1. ArrZarr Silver badge
            Coat

            Re: Grammar Gremlins

            Yu durnt nede dat commer afta suggests.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RIP Yahoo

    Destroyed by two harridan CEOs in quick succession, now Verizon (Oath) is applying the coup de grâce.

    IMHO, Yahoo Messenger could have been sold to one of the Chinese chat apps, or LINE, or Kakaotalk. Or Telegram.

    ICQ (and its famous flower icon and "uh-oh!" notification sound) is still alive and kicking, owned by a Russian company.

    1. FrankAlphaXII

      Re: RIP Yahoo

      So either have the Third Department of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission of China or the Russian Spetssvyaz slurping your information. Not exactly an ideal way of going about things but oh well if you don't care.

      I mean at least NSA pretend to not collect everything. We all know better, but they still try to act like they don't.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nostalgia

    If you want the old Yahoo Messenger sounds, this is where to get them:

    https://www.filecluster.com/howto/how-to-download-install-the-old-yahoo-messenger-sounds/

    And if you want the old version installers of Yahoo Messenger:

    http://www.oldversion.com/windows/yahoo-messenger/

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MSN / Microsoft Messenger was the shiz down here. Though you had to download patches to remove the ever increasing in-app adverts. MSN Chat was pretty big too. Do Yahoo still run those sketchy chat rooms?

    1. Chozo
      Unhappy

      Re: sketchy chat rooms

      Sadly they are no more and I miss the Wretched Hive of Scum & Villainy.

  9. kain preacher

    Yahoo is slowly destroying it's self.

  10. wolfetone Silver badge

    Yahoo! Will! Eat! Itself!

  11. King Jack
    Flame

    Yahoo is slowly destroying it's self

    Too true. They bought Coolpreviews an addon which previews links in mini pop-in pages. Makes browsing faster and cleaner. It is unique and nobody has written anything similar. The First thing they did was to shut it down. And Yahoo wonders why it's not popular? It part of the mentality of buying cool things then instantly destroying them. Kind of like a bully stamping on your lunch.

  12. arctic_haze

    Great!

    I await the day when Facebook Messanger will be terminated.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    F' Oath

    A little while ago a number of people experienced a strange occurrence, receiving notification of an access to their eMail accounts at a time well out of their regular habits, The stated time of access in the message was identical in all their accounts, highly unusual. The message was encouraging users to enter a mobile phone number for 2-factor identification. It appeared to be a valid internal message from Oath/Yahoo.

    If you get one of these then change your password anyway. And while 2-factor Id is great for banking and important things, I am cautious in using 2-factor for everything.

    The 'Free Mail' sites are more and more pushing to get your phone numbers, while advertising at you, I suggest to all they many need to select a provider closer to home and pay for something more reliable.

    1. DropBear

      Re: F' Oath

      Why would you be 'cautious' in using 2-factor for whatever you like? I enabled it on absolutely everything that allowed me to. Unless of course you mean "2-factor by SMS to my phone" which I just have no interest in, using an open source TOTP app instead; the sites I use it on don't know any more about me than they did before - how I conjure up the 6-digit code they ask me for 2FA is none of their goddamn business.

  14. ceebee

    why did Verizon buy Yahoo?

    No replacement ready

    No way to transfer contacts to "Squirrel"

    No way to transfer chats

    Why bother?

    In the end Squirrel is just a new chat program ... so why bother buying Yahoo at great cost? Hope the CEO is sacked ..actually he is retiring!

    Yahoo stuffed Messenger several years ago. Wrecked .. Groups ...Calendars ...Flickr ...everything it touched .. never listened to the users... and they wondered why they failed?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: why did Verizon buy Yahoo?

      Flickr was sold to SmugMug. Anyone has any ideas about SmugMug?

      https://petapixel.com/2018/04/21/thoughts-on-the-smugmug-flickr-acquisition/

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: why did Verizon buy Yahoo?

      Verizon only bought yahoo for their advertising business in order to boost their plans for mobile advertising incorporated into mobile TV. Yahoo is pretty much worthless even though everyone knows them, so it was just spare change for Verizon's monster budget

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: why did Verizon buy Yahoo?

      It makes as much sense as Microsoft buying Skype, destroying MSN Messenger to get everyone on Skype, and making Skype so shit to use and locking out older clients, phones, and TVs, that they effectively destroyed that too.

      Only Squirrel isn't as well known so the whole enterprise is even more doomed to failure.

  15. Michael Habel

    What if...

    My Parents are themselves to old to know what a Pager was back in the 90's before we had the Nokia 5010? #NOTALL of us are such younglings who visit this Site.

  16. Maryland, USA

    They already killed the presence icon

    Awhile ago, Yahoo stopped letting you see whether someone was online. at that point, for me, I quit. I don't want to begin every chat with the words "Are you there?"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They already killed the presence icon

      you try working in a department where everyone in the company knows you are available, you never get any wok done for the constant interuptions.

      1. Korev Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: They already killed the presence icon

        >you never get any wok done for the constant interuptions.

        Instant messaging kills my kitchen productivity too...

      2. kain preacher

        Re: They already killed the presence icon

        YIM had an option mark your self not online.

      3. fidodogbreath

        Re: They already killed the presence icon

        you try working in a department where everyone in the company knows you are available, you never get any work done for the constant interruptions.

        I was required to use The Software Formerly Known As Lync at a previous employer. I hated it with the searing heat of a thousand suns.

        I've managed to avoid it at my current gig, though; it seems that adding me to the company Skype cloud account would cost an apparently prohibitive ~ $2.50/mo. A rare case of bean counting FTW.

  17. Herring`

    Bad losers on Yahoo Chat

  18. Carlo C.

    Thank Dog I can still use Compuserve

    1. fidodogbreath

      Thank Dog I can still use Compuserve

      Which is yet another member of the Verizon / Oath "Greatest Hits of the 1980s" throwback band.

      Boomer nostalgia is a much more potent force than I thought.

  19. deltamind

    I never used yahoo messenger in my life, I mean yahoo itself was a pain to use when my first account was created, I remember my friend creating an account for me and swearing hard lol. He gave me alternatives but I liked the word "yahoo" and there we go. I can see yahoo mail dying as well.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How will speechless and dumbfounded paedos find their way on To Catch a Preadtor anymore?

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