Yahoo Answers ends May 4 with no plans to provide an archive of the website’s 16 years of content.
A notice at the top of every page on Yahoo Answers informs users of the impending closure. It reads:
“Yahoo Answers will close on May 4, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20, 2021 (Eastern Time), the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. No changes will be made to other Yahoo properties or services, or to your Yahoo account.”
The notice directs users to a help page that offers more information about the shutdown process.
Here are some key dates to know:
- April 20: No new content can be added to Yahoo Answers, but users can continue to read existing content.
- May 4: Yahoo Answers will no longer be accessible. The answers.yahoo.com website will redirect users to the Yahoo homepage.
- June 30th: Last day users can request a download of their own data.
Users can only download an archive of content they have contributed to Yahoo Answers. After submitting a request, Yahoo may take up to 30 days to compile the data and make it available for download.
Yahoo doesn’t mention anything about creating an archive of all site content available after May 4, and people aren’t happy about it.
A viral tweet compares the closure of Yahoo Answers to the historic fire at the Library of Alexandria:
The story is not “Yahoo Answers sucked anyway”. The story is that American Tech would burn down the Alexandria Library if their lawyers and accountants told them it wasn’t making any more money. A month’s notice is an insult. Underfunded archivists won’t even receive a data dump. pic.twitter.com/mHFRDgP8RF
— 🐶🆒 (@AriaSalvatrice) April 6, 2021
This Twitter user mentions that the decision to shut down Yahoo Answers stems from the service’s underperformance.
Yahoo makes no mention of it on its help page, but it did say something to this effect in an email sent directly to Yahoo Answers members.
The email states:
“While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as our members’ needs have changed. To that end, we have decided to shift our resources from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise to provide trusted, top-quality content.
Since Yahoo Answers is removed from the web in less than a month, web archivists probably don’t have time to download the large amount of content.
However, as TechCrunch’s Josh Constine points out, the quality of content we’re losing is debatable:
No! Yahoo will delete all Yahoo Answers. It’s like burning down the stupid Library of Alexandria on the Internet. We would lose antiquities like this: pic.twitter.com/sepP0gejjZ
—Josh Constine – SignalFire (@JoshConstine) April 5, 2021
People are sharing their favorite Yahoo Answers content on Twitter, reminding us all of the gems we’ll no longer have access to.
I will miss Yahoo Answers very much pic.twitter.com/TSOYPYOhUh
“Ammontet!” (@ammnontet) April 5, 2021
Yahoo Answers is shutting down, so I’m here to make sure we remember this gem of a question pic.twitter.com/5MK0LHG5ym
— ed (@edteix) April 5, 2021
With Yahoo Answers gone, I figured I’d also commemorate with my favorite image from then on pic.twitter.com/axDrmb4zwZ
— Retrotype (@Retronnity) April 6, 2021
rip yahoo answer you changed my life with this one pic.twitter.com/BD5Z43qkhL
— kermit gulag (@startunnels) April 5, 2021
The question that was never asked on Yahoo Answers pic.twitter.com/L9KbxRcysY
— James Halcrow (@james_hlcw) April 6, 2021
Yahoo Answers has become a source of great memes over the years. Although, as other users point out, Yahoo is erasing 16 years of Internet history is a real concern.
memes aside, I’m surprised there isn’t more genuine concern about the removal of Yahoo Answers. whatever its real value, they’re essentially deleting two entire decades of internet history with barely a month’s warning and without bothering to actually archive it
– ⭐ wish on a star ⭐ (@kisekisymphony) April 6, 2021
Enjoy content on Yahoo Answers while it’s still available.
Source: Yahoo, The Verge
