Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th
Users have until June 30th to request their data.
Yahoo Answers will shut down on May 4th, 2021. The website has been around since 2005, making it one of the longest-running Q&A platforms on the internet. In a FAQ spotted by The Verge, Yahoo (which is owned by Engadget's parent company, Verizon Media) details how the process will unfold.
The company will start sunsetting the platform on April 20th. That's when it plans to stop accepting new submissions. After May 4th, you'll have until June 30th to download an archive of content you posted to the website. When everything is said and done, the Yahoo Answers webpage will redirect to the Yahoo homepage. As you might imagine, the company's decision to shutter the website comes down to waning usage stats.
"While Yahoo Answers was 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," the company says in a message to users. "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."
As for what you can attribute to that decline, part of the problem is that Google includes its own Q&A section. When it comes to most questions, the company's search engine provides a widget that allows you to get a quick answer without navigating to another website. A visit to the Yahoo Answers front page provides another likely reason. The quality of posts has declined in recent years, with posts created by trolls getting the most play.
