It’s time to say goodbye to one of the most famous Q&A platforms.
On Tuesday, Yahoo announced it would close down its Yahoo Answers, the social Q&A platform, on May 4.
The shut down of Yahoo FAQs means that users can not post questions or answers on it.
If you were to go to Yahoo Answers, you could see the page explaining what is happening at the top.
Yahoo sent out an email and a statement on its site where it read
“Yahoo Answers is shut down, the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties, services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.”
In the announcement, they linked a FAQ page it said that the users would be able to see the read-only version of Yahoo Answers..
After that, Yahoo answers will completely shut down, and any user trying to go to that page will get redirected to the Yahoo Main page.
The Yahoo Answers department started in June 2005.
This site was a source of internet comedy and funny memes because the questions would not get worded that well, and answers would often be completely wrong.
One example is from a post that a user named Kavya wrote in 2006, where the user asked
How does a baby gets formed? How does a girl get pregnant?”
Nowadays, the first page of Yahoo Answers has gotten filled with conspiracy questions about the presidency of Joe Biden, the Holocaust, and much more.
Users have the advantage of downloading the data of Yahoo Answers before the department gets shut down.
You can do so by
- Login to your Google account
- Go to Privacy Dashboard and Controls
- Go to Download and view your Yahoo data
- Click Download My Data
You will receive the data archive in the email that you provide. It can take 30 days for you to receive the downloaded data.
As Yahoo stated
According to The Verge, Yahoo Answers also sent a notice to their active members on their Yahoo Answers platform letting them know of the shutdown.
Yahoo began the message with the following
“We launched Yahoo Answers sixteen years ago to help people worldwide connect and share information.”
They further said
“With you and millions of other users, we built the best place on the web to ask and answer questions on various topics, creating a global knowledge-sharing community. 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.”
The note further says that Yahoo Answers has become an essential part of Yahoo. However, with time it has become less popular. Therefore, the best thing for them was to use the resources from Yahoo’s answers to other products and services that consumers want.
It is goodbye to Yahoo Answers from us!
