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Sad News: Yahoo! Answers is Gone

 


The once great Yahoo! brand has died a slow death.

Yahoo the ISP was one of the pioneers of the internet era. Created in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang, originally known by the simple yet cumbersome name "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." 

Yahoo had its glory days through the remainder of that decade. In 1997 it initiated Yahoo!Mail, the first free email offered to the general public. Some of you may know that I still have and make at least some use of my yahoo.com address. By 1998, Yahoo's homepage was the most popular starting point for web users.

After that, there was the dotcom bust of 2000-01, which Yahoo weathered rather well given its leading position in many fields. But that experience may have instilled in the high ranks of the company a notion of the defensive crouch as a wise policy. It didn't prove to be in the years that followed. 

Yahoo ceased to be an independent company in 2016-17, as Verizon purchased it in two stages. Since then, there has been only the brand name. And Verizon's division "Verizon Media," heir to that brand (and to AOL as well).

Earlier this month (May, 2021, in case you've forgotten)  Verizon agreed to sell VM to Apollo Global Management. 

The disappearance of Yahoo!Answers is another step in the dissolution of a once great empire created by some pioneering early work in the heroic days of Silicon Valley. 

A moment of silence, please.


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