Yahoo Groups will shut down for good on Dec. 15, a year after company parent Verizon decided to gut most of the functionality from the 20-year-old discussion board platform.
Yahoo said supporting the platform “no longer fit” with its long-term strategy, citing low use. At the same time, Yahoo is indicating it’s moving away from hosting user-generated content.
“Yahoo Groups has seen a steady decline in usage over the last several years,” Yahoo said in a FAQ about the shutdown. “Over that same period, we’ve witnessed unprecedented levels of engagement across our properties as customers seek out premium, trustworthy content.”
A year ago, Verizon hastened the demise by first stopping users from posting new content to Yahoo Groups, and then deleting all content from the discussion board platform. What's left of Yahoo Groups is basically an email list service, enabling members to still keep in touch. But now that function is about to expire too.
Today, Yahoo is disabling the function to create new groups. Then on Dec. 15, members will no longer be able to send or receive emails via Yahoo Groups. “If you try to email your group after December 15, your message will not be delivered and you will receive a failure notification,” Yahoo added.
Yahoo’s FAQ on the shutdown is also recommending that affected users migrate to competing platforms, such as Facebook Groups, Google Groups, and Groups.io, which offers a paid function to import members from Yahoo Groups. However, only an admin of a Yahoo Group will be able to download a full list of group members’ email addresses.
The impending shutdown closes a chapter of internet history. Fortunately, a volunteer team of archivists worked last year to save many of the pages on Yahoo Groups before they were taken down. A volunteer told PCMag the goal is to sort and eventually upload the saved files to the Internet Archive.