Yahoo Answers will cease to exist on May 4th, 2021

If you have been to the Yahoo Answers website recently, you may have noticed a big banner at the top stating that the site will be shut down on May 4th, 2021.

The questions & answers platform Yahoo Answers was launched in 2006. It allowed users with a Yahoo account to post questions on the site and to answer questions.

Yahoo is part of Verizon Media Group since 2016 and many former Yahoo properties, including Tumbler, Flickr,  Yahoo Groups or Yahoo Messenger, were shut down or sold since then.

The message at the top of the Yahoo Answers page informs users about the shutdown and a FAQ that Yahoo has created.

Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account.

Interestingly enough, another banner on the site encourages new users to sign up to the service.

Yahoo Answers will be set to read-only on April 20th, 2021. Users may still read questions and answers, but posting will be disabled on that day. On May 4th -- Star Wars Day -- Yahoo Answers will be shut down for good and the entire site will be redirected to the Yahoo homepage.

Yahoo Answers users have until June 30, 2021 to download their data from the service; this can be done following this link. The download package includes all of the user's content, including posted questions and answers, lists, and images. It does not contain other user's content, however, including answers to questions.

The change won't impact other Yahoo services or Yahoo accounts. Yahoo sent an email to active users of the service that informs them about the upcoming shutdown of the site. In it, the company reveals that Yahoo Answers has become less popular over the years and that the decision was made based on those numbers and the outlook.

The Internet Archive has downloaded a huge Yahoo Answers data set already but it does not seem to be available publicly yet; this could change with the shutdown on May 4, 2021 though.

If you are looking for Yahoo Answers alternatives, check out Answers or Stack Overflow.

Now You: are you affected by the change? Did you use Yahoo Answers in the past?

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