4th May will be the last day for the Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers, one of the internet's longest-running and most storied web Q&A sites, is going to shut down on 4th May. On that date, the Yahoo Answers website will begin redirecting to the Yahoo homepage, and all of the platform's archives will ostensibly cease to exist. The website has been up and running since 2005, and although its popularity as a meme has waned, its utility as a forum has increased with the emergence of Reddit, Quora, and other rival internet hangouts.

Following the company's sale to Verizon Media Group for nearly $5 billion in 2017, Yahoo revealed the shift at the top of the Yahoo Answers homepage. The message includes a connection to a FAQ that explains the shutdown's timeline. The platform will no longer welcome new submissions beginning April 20th, according to the FAQ.

Further, users will have until 30th June to submit their data until it becomes unavailable. According to Yahoo, this includes “all user-generated material, including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images,” but “you will not be able to download other users' content, questions, or answers.”

A note sent to active Yahoo Answers members explains why the site is being shut down, saying that “it has become less successful over the years” and that the company “decided to move our resources away” from the product to “focus on products that better serve our members.”

Dear Yahoo Answers Community,

We launched Yahoo Answers sixteen years ago to help people around the world connect and share information. With you and millions of other users, we built the best place on the web to ask and answer questions on a variety of topics, creating a community of global knowledge sharing. While we could not have been prouder of what we accomplished together, we are reaching out today to let you know that we have decided to shut down Yahoo Answers on May 4th, 2021.

While Yahoo Answers war once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed. To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content.

Starting on April 20th you will no longer be able to post any new questions or answers. However, you can still view any posted questions and answers until May 4th. On May 4th the site will be shutting down. If you would like to download a copy of your questions and answers you have posted, you can do this by signing into Your Privacy Dashboard and requesting a download. You will be able to do this until June 30th, 2021 after which your Yahoo Answers data will be securely deleted and no longer available. The closure of Yahoo Answers will not affect your Yahoo account or other Yahoo services. For further information and instructions on how to download your data, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions or copy and paste this URL into your browser:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN35642.html

Thank you for contributing to Yahoo Answers — we’re proud and honored to have helped you connect with and learn from the Yahoo community these past sixteen years. If you’d like to provide feedback, please feel free to reach out to our team at yahoo_answers_sunset@verizonmedia.com.

Sincerely, The Yahoo Answers team

Maybe the closure is for the better, given that the site tends to be riddled with far-right conspiracy theories. In its discovery section, the new Yahoo Answers homepage highlights such introspective gems as “Will America Survive 4 Years of Joe Biden?” and “Will this summer be record riots by BLM and Antifa?” as well as this instant classic, “Was Stalin Right About Everything?”

May all the wandering souls of Yahoo Answers now find the answers they seek somewhere more reliable, and may anyone, somewhere someday find the answer to how babies are made.