NEW DELHI: One of the oldest Q&A platforms on the Internet will shut down soon. Web services provider Yahoo on Tuesday announced the shutdown of Yahoo Answers, through a post on the platform. The announcement shows up on top of the Yahoo Answers website and informs users that the platform will be canned from 4 May. The website will be available though, but in read-only mode from 20 April, meaning it won’t accept new submissions or answers.
The company will also allow users to download their data till 30 June this year. “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," the company said on its FAQ page. It could take the company up to 30 days to prepare your data.
Users of Yahoo Answers have been receiving notifications about the shutdown through personal notes. Yahoo says the platform has lost popularity over the years and hence the company decided to “shift" its resources to other 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," the company said in the emails.
While Q&A platforms like Yahoo Answers, and even Google’s Quora, have lost popularity over the years, the sixteen-year-old platform still led users to express their disappointment on Twitter. “The story isn't "Yahoo Answers sucked anyway". The story is that American Tech would burn the library of Alexandria if their lawyers and accountants told them it's no longer earning money. One month notice is an insult. Underfunded archivists will not even be given a data dump," wrote one user.
