The app was one of the first instant messaging tools on the market, created in 1998, and found a following among oil traders.
The app is shutting down on July 17, after a 20-year run. Yahoo, which was acquired by Verizon in 2017, didn’t give an explanation for shutting its messenger down, but given the sheer amount of already popular messaging apps on the market, it was probably hard to compete with the existing product.
Yahoo is currently beta testing an invite-only messaging app called Squirrel, which could serve as a replacement for those who will miss Messenger. However, since Squirell’s release last month, it has been downloaded fewer than 5,000 times, compared to the nearly half-million downloads of Yahoo Messenger during the last quarter, according to Randy Nelson, the head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower.
Source: After 20 years, Yahoo Messenger is finally shutting down