The writing's been on the wall for a while: this was first announced last year, then postponed, and the online UI was already shut down in February 2020.<p>Completely boneheaded move in that it removes the last reason many people like myself would ever even stumble into a Yahoo site, but then again, Yahoo Groups's SEO visibility is also near-zero these days, and I figure the beancounters at Yahoo computed that this is worth less than the ever-present cost/risk of policing random contributions. (Which is also why file attachments were the first to go.)<p>For anybody looking for a replacement, I can recommend groups.io (no affiliation), which also has a pretty smooth migration tool and has a completely adequate free "Basic" tier: <a href="https://groups.io/" rel="nofollow">https://groups.io/</a>
Just got the email:<p>Dear Yahoo Group Moderators and Members,<p>We launched Yahoo Groups 20 years ago to connect people around their shared interests. We helped our users navigate new towns, keep in touch with college friends, learn new skills, and most importantly, build connections they may have lost or never had in the first place. While we could not have been more proud of what we accomplished together, we are reaching out today with heavy hearts to let you know that we have decided to shut down Yahoo Groups on December 15, 2020.<p>Yahoo Groups has seen a steady decline in usage over the last several years. Over that same period we’ve witnessed unprecedented levels of engagement across our properties as customers seek out premium, trustworthy content. To that end, we must sometimes make difficult decisions regarding products that no longer fit our long-term strategy as we hone our focus on other areas of the business.<p>Beginning December 15, 2020 the Yahoo Groups website will shut down and members will no longer be able to send or receive emails from Yahoo Groups. We’ve compiled a comprehensive FAQ here that includes alternative providers and information on how this will impact your group content.<p>Thank you for helping us build one of the earliest digital communities — we’re proud and honored to have forged countless connections over the last 20 years and played a small part in helping build your communities.<p>Sincerely,
The Yahoo Groups team
I spent a good amount of my teenage using Yahoo services - Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Groups, Geocities, Yahoo Mail and of course Yahoo search. It's really sad to see them fade into oblivion.<p>I wonder what will happen to Google and Facebook in the next twenty years.
There was a lot of issues with the "new" Yahoo Groups web frontend. A feedback system was set up, but virtually all the reports were ignored. They removed it altogether at some point, so you couldn't even see reports or vote counts. It became <i>infuriating</i> to use; at first it was basically useless, the most critical issues were (slowly) fixed. But search and pagination was significantly worse than before, and it truncated <i>all</i> subjects, even if they would fit perfectly fine in view. The post overview literally looked like "Can you ....", "Question about ....", "Processor is ....". Putting on the tinfoil hat, it almost seems like they <i>wanted</i> it to die, leaving this issue unfixed..<p>The (one) group I followed basically disbanded in the year following the "new" launch. I think it's about a year ago they officially closed it down, activity moved to a Facebook group and a subreddit. It's a pity really, I miss the mailing list architecture.
Yahoo and AOL are kept on life support only to give Verizon MAU and DAU metrics. They add to the numbers of “total active users” for the corporation as a whole. Email keeps them around. Interestingly Yahoo had a large engineering army it inherited from the offshoring to India movement of 2000s. Much of that engineering capital was left idle as the services wound down. The amount of redundant Drupal layers built to justify their presence was shocking to hear about. Whole families had moved to Sunnyvale banking on long careers at Yahoo. Many are returning now. I picked all this up anecdotally as a contractor there a few years ago. The Yahoo story will make an interesting book someday.
Yahoo Directory is gone. Yahoo Search is gone. Alibaba got away. Now Yahoo Groups is going. The Yahoo home page looks like a low end news scraper site, like Newsmax. It's now owned by Verizon, which feels they should have some presence in "content". Unclear if Yahoo is profitable; Verizon doesn't break out the numbers of Yahoo vs their other sites.<p>AOL is in a similar position. There are enough legacy customers to justify keeping the power on.
> Yahoo Groups has seen a steady decline in usage over the last several years. Over that same period, we’ve witnessed unprecedented levels of engagement across our properties as customers seek out premium, trustworthy content.<p>Out of interest does anyone know what they consider their premium, trustworthy content?
Why is it companies like Verizon buy companies like yahoo only to destroy the few things that made the company valuable? Is there some weird financial instrument that makes this profitable?
Weird that they cannot make business out it or sell it off to someone who can. There has to be millions of users. Is the value of it really less than zero?
Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201014053226/https://uk.help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/SLN35505.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20201014053226/https://uk.help.y...</a>