American multinational technology company Yahoo Inc. has announced the shutting down of its chat service Yahoo Messenger from August 5 this year.
However, the company has asked all its users to move to the new version of the Messenger, introduced last year.
“In December of 2015, we announced a brand new Yahoo Messenger for mobile, the Web and in Yahoo Mail on the desktop, built on a new modern platform. This complete revamp brings users an incredibly fast, beautiful and smart way to send – and unsend – messages, photos and animated GIFs in 1:1 and group conversations,” Yahoo chief architect Amotz Maimon said while explaining the company’s move.
“While today we provide basic interoperation between the legacy product and the new Messenger, we encourage all of our users to complete their transition to the new Yahoo Messenger as we will no longer support the legacy platform as of August 5, 2016. We intend to continue our focused efforts on the new Messenger, with a goal of delivering the best experience to our users,” Maimon added.
As earlier reported, Yahoo Inc entered into the last stage of selling its core business like a search engine, mail & news. Sources also revealed that Yahoo is in talk with US network operators like AT&T and Verizon Inc to sell these businesses.
After selling the core business Yahoo wants to focus on future technologies which include messengers and AI. The move follows more than three years of effort by CEO Marissa Mayer to turn around Yahoo by focusing on mobile apps and trying to boost advertising revenue.
Yahoo’s attempt to sell its core business comes after shelving previous plans to spin off its stake in e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Yahoo Messenger was originally launched under the name Yahoo! Pager on March 9, 1998. It is an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo.