10 ms·

The writing's been on the wall for a while: this was first announced last year, then postponed, and the online UI was already shut down in February 2020. Compl

The writing's been on the wall for a while: this was first announced last year, then postponed, and the online UI was already shut down in February 2020. Completely boneheaded move in that it removes the last reason many people like myself would ever even stumble into a Yahoo site, but then again, Yahoo Groups's SEO visibility is also near-zero these days, and I figure the beancounters at Yahoo computed that this is worth less than the ever-present cost/risk of policing random contributions. (Which is also why file attachments were the first to go.) For anybody looking for a replacement, I can recommend groups.io (no affiliation), which also has a pretty smooth migration tool and has a completely adequate free "Basic" tier: https://groups.io/ https://groups.io/

raphlinus 6y ago
I can second this recommendation. Our Quaker Meeting was on Yahoo Groups for 12 years, but we also saw the clear signs that it was going to shut down, so migrated to groups.io a few months ago. Generally it's been quite smooth. It took a while for the moderators to figure out the reply policy settings we needed, but now it's pretty nicely tuned. (I was only tangentially involved, I'm on the committee but am responsible for a different part of communications, so in part this was a test of how well it works for users who aren't PhD computer scientists).
- zabouti 6y ago
  Does your Quaker Meeting pay for groups.io? Their website seems to say that the cheapest plan is $20/month, too much for my group to afford. Thanks.
pbreit 6y ago
Who works at Yahoo nowadays? Do they still have offices in Sunnyvale? Everything seems on auto-pilot except for some fantasy sports opinion writers.
- gogopuppygogo 6y ago
  Yahoo isn’t a company anymore it’s a brand. It’s a death walk to insolvency at this point. They’ll extract whatever value they can before killing it.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Yahoo is such a weird company in that it does so much yet it doesn't have the mindshare. Maybe it's a completely different generation still using it, I don't know.
    - dageshi 6y ago
      It is I think, my mom still uses it and still has a yahoo email address. I'm guessing there's a lot of older users for whom yahoo was good enough and is still good enough given their usage.
      - dwighttk 6y ago
        I watched a friend load their yahoo webmail and it had multiple auto-playing video ads (I don’t think there was sound but their audio may have been muted). I feel dirty just mentioning it.
    - netcan 6y ago
      Until they killed the comments section a few months ago, yahoo news (comments) seemed in the same league as a reddit or whatnot for a lot of news. There would be hundreds or thousands of posts on most daily news items. Yahoo slipped into a segment of invisible people. The volume is there, but the people are middle aged late adopters... very far from the cultural centre of gravity. They're affected by the conversation elsewhere but don't affect it. It's like that random singer-songwriter no one seems to have heard about in years, but still packs stadiums.
      - pgrote 6y ago
        >Until they killed the comments section Excellent take. The comments were filled with additional information and there was a community. I understand why they got rid of them due to creeping toxicity, but they didn't even try to improve it before killing it.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I mean it’s Oath now is it not
  - miked85 6y ago
    Oath was killed off, it is Verizon Media Group now [1]. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/verizon-says-oath-dead-meet-verizon-media-group-n949631 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/verizon-says-oath-dead-meet...
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  I think it's a AOL subsidiary and they treat it like cheap content farm, like all of the AOL brands. Or was it Verizon? Or does Verizon owns AOL? Something like that edit: yeah Verizon, AOL, Yahoo are the same company now and basically mass-producing content
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    Oath?
  - netcan 6y ago
    Content farming to what end? Yahoo seems to have little SEO presence at all.
- boilerupnc 6y ago
  Interestingly, Yahoo Japan remains a dominant force in that particular market. "Yahoo! Japan's web portal is the most visited website in Japan, and its internet services are mostly dominant in the country." [1]. They are the number 2 search engine in terms of marketshare with almost 20% [2] . I kinda think of their unique national presence as a quasi representation of Google + Facebook + Ebay experiences all-in-one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/japan https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/ja...
  - basch 6y ago
    A completely different company owned by Softbank and Alibaba.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
andyjpb 6y ago
If I remember correctly, Groups.io was started (~2010s?) by the founder of Onelist (~mid 1990s) which merged with eGroups (~2000) and was subsequently purchased by Yahoo and became Yahoo Groups. It just goes to show that Yahoo could have innovated to improve the product but was unable to. The original founder understood the needs and how things have changed (or not) over the past 25 years.
zabouti 6y ago
Could you explain more about this "Basic" free tier? When I go to https://groups.io/static/pricing https://groups.io/static/pricing, I see a free 30-day account, after which it becomes $20/month. You're not the first person who has said there's a free plan at groups.io but I don't seem able to get one myself. Have their plans changed recently?
- raybb 6y ago
  Scroll down or ctrl + F "free" It's just lower down the page

raphlinus 6y ago

I can second this recommendation. Our Quaker Meeting was on Yahoo Groups for 12 years, but we also saw the clear signs that it was going to shut down, so migrated to groups.io a few months ago. Generally it's been quite smooth. It took a while for the moderators to figure out the reply policy settings we needed, but now it's pretty nicely tuned. (I was only tangentially involved, I'm on the committee but am responsible for a different part of communications, so in part this was a test of how well it works for users who aren't PhD computer scientists).

zabouti 6y ago
Does your Quaker Meeting pay for groups.io? Their website seems to say that the cheapest plan is $20/month, too much for my group to afford. Thanks.

pbreit 6y ago

Who works at Yahoo nowadays? Do they still have offices in Sunnyvale? Everything seems on auto-pilot except for some fantasy sports opinion writers.

gogopuppygogo 6y ago
Yahoo isn’t a company anymore it’s a brand. It’s a death walk to insolvency at this point. They’ll extract whatever value they can before killing it.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Yahoo is such a weird company in that it does so much yet it doesn't have the mindshare. Maybe it's a completely different generation still using it, I don't know.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    It is I think, my mom still uses it and still has a yahoo email address. I'm guessing there's a lot of older users for whom yahoo was good enough and is still good enough given their usage.
    - dwighttk 6y ago
      I watched a friend load their yahoo webmail and it had multiple auto-playing video ads (I don’t think there was sound but their audio may have been muted). I feel dirty just mentioning it.
  - netcan 6y ago
    Until they killed the comments section a few months ago, yahoo news (comments) seemed in the same league as a reddit or whatnot for a lot of news. There would be hundreds or thousands of posts on most daily news items. Yahoo slipped into a segment of invisible people. The volume is there, but the people are middle aged late adopters... very far from the cultural centre of gravity. They're affected by the conversation elsewhere but don't affect it. It's like that random singer-songwriter no one seems to have heard about in years, but still packs stadiums.
    - pgrote 6y ago
      >Until they killed the comments section Excellent take. The comments were filled with additional information and there was a community. I understand why they got rid of them due to creeping toxicity, but they didn't even try to improve it before killing it.
saagarjha 6y ago
I mean it’s Oath now is it not
- miked85 6y ago
  Oath was killed off, it is Verizon Media Group now [1]. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/verizon-says-oath-dead-meet-verizon-media-group-n949631 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/verizon-says-oath-dead-meet...
shp0ngle 6y ago
I think it's a AOL subsidiary and they treat it like cheap content farm, like all of the AOL brands. Or was it Verizon? Or does Verizon owns AOL? Something like that edit: yeah Verizon, AOL, Yahoo are the same company now and basically mass-producing content
- dwighttk 6y ago
  Oath?
- netcan 6y ago
  Content farming to what end? Yahoo seems to have little SEO presence at all.
boilerupnc 6y ago
Interestingly, Yahoo Japan remains a dominant force in that particular market. "Yahoo! Japan's web portal is the most visited website in Japan, and its internet services are mostly dominant in the country." [1]. They are the number 2 search engine in terms of marketshare with almost 20% [2] . I kinda think of their unique national presence as a quasi representation of Google + Facebook + Ebay experiences all-in-one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/japan https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/ja...
- basch 6y ago
  A completely different company owned by Softbank and Alibaba.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

andyjpb 6y ago

If I remember correctly, Groups.io was started (~2010s?) by the founder of Onelist (~mid 1990s) which merged with eGroups (~2000) and was subsequently purchased by Yahoo and became Yahoo Groups. It just goes to show that Yahoo could have innovated to improve the product but was unable to. The original founder understood the needs and how things have changed (or not) over the past 25 years.

zabouti 6y ago

Could you explain more about this "Basic" free tier? When I go to https://groups.io/static/pricing https://groups.io/static/pricing, I see a free 30-day account, after which it becomes $20/month. You're not the first person who has said there's a free plan at groups.io but I don't seem able to get one myself. Have their plans changed recently?

raybb 6y ago
Scroll down or ctrl + F "free" It's just lower down the page