Remember when your chat ID "XxbAby_dUn_hErd_mE_nO_mOAr1991xX" was cool?
According to Tech Crunch, on June 8, Oath Inc. — the umbrella company that owns Yahoo! and AOL — announced that it would shut down the well-known instant messaging app Yahoo! Messenger on July 17.
In the statement made by Oath, the company said that there isn't a replacement for the app at the moment, as it is still experimenting with new tools and services that better fit the current digital communication landscape.
"We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first chat apps of its kind. As the communications landscape continues to change over, we're focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs," the statement says.
One of the new messaging apps under development is called Yahoo Squirrel, which is invite-only and still in beta. A first look at the app's layout suggests that Squirrel is going to be similar to many team collaboration chat apps such as Slack, Discord, or Microsoft Teams, but for friends and families.
For many Vietnamese internet users, Yahoo Messenger is an iconic entity that embodies Vietnam's early digital and instant messaging culture during the 2000s. For the sake of nostalgia pandering, many Vietnamese internet users have taken to social media to share their own Yahoo Messenger memories. Oath allows people to download their data via a request site — which can be accessed here — in the next six months before the app officially shutdowns completely.
Goodbye Yahoo Messenger. You've left us with a memorable decade of cryptic conversations, awkward usernames, and this gem of a video commercial:
Videov via YouTube user Kiva Dang.
[Photo via Zeebis]
