Yahoo Messenger Shut Down After 20 Years in Service, Redirects Users to Squirrel
U.S based telecommunication firm; Verizon Communications Inc. has decided to finally bring the pioneer web messaging platform; Yahoo Messenger (YM) to rest on July 17th, ending its 20 year of service. It’s reported that the company is developing another messaging app, Squirrel that will probably be a replacement of YM.
“There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).”
Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month. You can request access to the beta here. As an alternative, users have the choice to use the Squirrel service which has been reported to have the chat and other features that YM offered. The app is available on both Android and iOS. YM users will be automatically redirected to Squirrel while new users can ask for an invite to join Squirrel.
The company never mentioned reasons for shutting down Messenger, but given the dominance today from likes of Facebook’s WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat, Instagram Direct, Twitter, LinkedIn and a number of others.
“Yahoo Messenger has had an amazing run. Over its 20 years, Yahoo Messenger introduced hundreds of millions of people to the joys of just the right emoticon for the moment. Yahoo Messenger changed the lives of millions, and thousands of people have sent us letters and photos over the years to share their stories of meeting a spouse over the service, keeping in touch with kids while serving overseas in the military, or introducing grandparents to new members of the family from across the globe,” company writes in a statement.
After the shut down, the company stated that the users will get up to end of November to download their chat history if they wished to.
