After 20 years, Yahoo messenger will shut down finally on July 17

Yahoo Messenger, one of the first instant messaging service has announced that it will shut down on July 17.  

Yahoo made the announcement on its website, where it said the service can be used normally only until next month.

Read the full statement below...

A while back we announced that we had completely modernized the technology that powered Yahoo Messenger. We made significant upgrades to key areas like photo sharing, made the service faster and more secure.  

With the new platform, we were also able to build new types of messaging products and integrations. For example, our recently announced group messaging product, Yahoo Squirrel, aimed at improving the productivity of messaging, is based on this platform. Note: Yahoo Squirrel is invite-only still, but we will be opening it up to everyone shortly.  

While there are many big messaging services today, just as in many things, the next phase of disruption in messaging is right around the corner. That is where we as engineers, product managers and designers have shifted our focus.  

So as we continue to build and innovate products on our new messaging platform, we are announcing today that we will retire Yahoo Messenger, effective July 17, 2018.  

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.  

We are thankful to the hundreds of millions who have used Messenger over the years as well as the thousands who have worked on it inside Yahoo for more than two decades.