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The foretold death of Yahoo Groups

October 17, 2019.

Yahoo Groups.

Yahoo Groups. © Verizon Media.

Yahoo Groups, which belongs to Verizon since 2017, will be shutting down after 18 years, and all of its contents will be deleted by mid-December. “Yahoo has made the decision to no longer allow users to upload content to the Yahoo Groups site,” the company said in a notice to users. “Beginning October 28, you won’t be able to upload any more content to the site, and as of December 14 all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. You’ll have until that date to save anything you’ve uploaded.”

The service, which launched in 2001 and hit 10 million groups in 2010, is yet another casualty of the rise of social networks, and especially of Facebook and its excellent group feature. But it is also a victim of Yahoo’s own problems, especially the mega data breach revealed in 2016. Besides, Yahoo stopped developing the platform in 2014, which led to a user drain. As was the case with Geocities (killed off by Yahoo in 2009), another chapter of Web history and Web memory will be wiped off the map. However, Internet Archive has said they’d do everything in their power to preserve as much data as possible before the end.

The Verge, Jay Peters, “Yahoo will delete all Yahoo Groups content on December 14th.”