Sad news of ‘90s kids as Yahoo is finally pulling the plug off from its good old Yahoo Messenger. The company has officially confirmed that it will shut down the Messaging App from July 17.
Users still clinging to the messaging service will be redirected to Yahoo Squirrel, a new instant messaging application. The app is invite-only service and the company claims that it is currently an invite-only, but the brand will open it to everyone shortly. The app is currently available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store respectively.
Yahoo Messenger was released way back in 1998. The company then renamed it to Yahoo Messenger on June 21, 1999 and it become an instant hit. The service allowed users to chat with other people and it was the first platform for real-time communication. The service was free to use and mostly relied on add-supported network. Users were able to know whether the other people are online with a green light meaning that they were available for chat, yellow means they were busy and red means the person is offline.
“Yahoo Messenger has had an amazing run. Over its twenty years, Yahoo Messenger introduced hundreds of millions of people to the joys of just the right emoticon for the moment (aka emojis). 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,” Michael Albers, VP of Communication Products at Oath said in a statement.
Yahoo Messenger users can still download their chat history. All they need to do is go the downloader request site, sign in with their Yahoo ID, select a verification method and then enter the Account Key. After that users need to click download and enter the email where the chat history file will be emailed.