Yahoo Answers, one of the oldest Q&A platforms since the invention of the Internet, has announced to shut down soon. On Tuesday, Yahoo company announced the shutdown of Yahoo Answers on their platform through a post. The announcement is showing up at the top of the platform informing users that the platform will close from May 4.
However, the website will be available for users but in read-only mode from April 20 and won’t be accepting new submissions or answers from users. Yahoo has been facing issues due to falling search engineer users while its opponents are growing heavily.
“Your Yahoo Answers data download will return all user-generated content including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images. You won’t be able to download other users’ content, questions, or answers,” said Yahoo’s FAQ page. Yahoo will provide its users with an option to download their data till June 20, 2021.
Yahoo has been sending notifications of personal notes to its Yahoo Answers users. According to the company, over the years, the platform has lost its popularity, thus they are looking to shift their resources to other Yahoo products.
“While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed. To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content,” read the company email.
Q&A platforms popularity
Over the years not just Yahoo Answers, but other query-related platforms such as Google’s Quora, etc have become less popular among Internet users. Many are seeing this as a good move by the company as the platform became a far-right conspiracies hub in some countries.
While in India, Quora is considered to be a hub for right-wing communities to spread fall information. Questions related to history are often answered by a set of people who tend to add false narrative in their answers. Many also complained about the false information people provide in their answers and use the platform for marketing their products.
Dear Yahoo Answers Community,
We launched Yahoo Answers sixteen years ago to help people around the world connect and share information. With you and millions of other users, we built the best place on the web to ask and answer questions on a variety of topics, creating a community of global knowledge sharing. 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 on May 4th, 2021.
While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed. To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content.
Starting on April 20 you will no longer be able to post any new questions or answers. However, you can still view any posted questions and answers until May 4th. On May 4th the site will be shutting down. If you would like to download a copy of your questions and answers you have posted, you can do this by signing into Your Privacy Dashboard and requesting a download. You will be able to do this until June 30th, 2021 after which your Yahoo Answers data will be securely deleted and no longer available. The closure of Yahoo Answers will not affect your Yahoo account or other Yahoo services. For further information and instructions on how to download your data, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions or copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN35642.html
Thank you for contributing to Yahoo Answers — we’re proud and honored to have helped you connect with and learn from the Yahoo community these past sixteen years. If you’d like to provide feedback, please feel free to reach out to our team at yahoo_answers_sunset@verizonmedia.com.
Sincerely, The Yahoo Answers team