It is one of the last most read posts of our Facebook group: Yahoo Answers officially closes its doors . The announcement is made by both the many users who are receiving the official email in these hours, and precisely Yahoo itself through official communication with the various steps that will lead to the closure of the service.
Yahoo Answers was launched a good sixteen years ago and its purpose was quite noble: to help people around the world connect and share information . And indeed it has been for a long time. Millions of users exchanged questions and answers on a daily basis to the most disparate questions.
But sixteen years is a long time, and in the meantime the web has evolved . Meanwhile Wikipedia has taken hold more and more, and alternative services like Quora have slowly taken over. It is the same company responsible for the service that says how the needs of the community have changed over time in the email sent to users:
While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo products, over the years it has become less and less used as the needs of our community change. This is why we have decided to move our resources away from Yahoo Answers and focus on products that are more useful to our community while keeping Yahoo's promise to provide reliable, high-quality content.
So we come to the timeline relating to the closure. From next April 20 it will no longer be possible to publish new questions , nor to answer the old ones . In any case, it will be possible to read the questions and answers published before then until next May 4th . On this last date, the site will be permanently closed.
It will also be possible to download a copy of all the questions and answers written over the years through the Privacy Dashboard in the Yahoo profile. You can request the download of these files until June 30, 2021, after which all data will be securely deleted. However, closing Yahoo Answers will not affect your personal Yahoo account.
