End of Life Announcement: Yahoo! Web Messenger

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 04 Oct 2011

Right now, you can enjoy the functionality Yahoo! Messenger has to offer on your desktop, on your mobile phone, and in your browser window. But come the 1st of November, one of those options will be taken away from you. You will still be able to use the desktop client (there’s a version for Windows, Mac and Linux) and the mobile phone version (the iOS or the Android version), but you won’t be able to use the version you can access in your browser window, mainly Yahoo! Web Messenger.

The Yahoo! Messenger team announced that Yahoo! Web Messenger will reach end of life on the 1st of November. The team provided two reasons why they’re discontinuing support for Yahoo! Web Messenger.

The first reason is that you can access Yahoo! Mail in your browser and log into Yahoo! Messenger from within Yahoo! Mail. The same web experience that Yahoo! Web Messenger used to offer is now readily available within Yahoo! Mail. “This feature in Yahoo! Mail made Yahoo! Web Messenger somewhat obsolete,” said the Yahoo! Messenger Team. So come the 1st of November, if you want to chat with your Yahoo! Messenger friends and don’t want to install the desktop client, you can do so in your browser window by logging into Yahoo! Mail. Detailed instructions on how to use Yahoo! Messenger in Yahoo! Mail are available here.

Moving on, the second reason is that the Yahoo! Messenger team wants to deliver a best-in-class instant messaging experience to everyone, and by discontinuing support for Yahoo! Web Messenger, it can better use its resources to reach that goal.

“Today Yahoo! supports Messenger on the Windows PC desktop client, Mac and mobile and tablet devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android smart phones and RIM devices to name a few. We’re seeing an increasing number of users on these products and we’re working hard to continually improve and enhance the innovative aspects of Messenger like gaming and video calls. By discontinuing support of Yahoo! Web Messenger, we’ll be able to reallocate resources to develop cool, new features for Messenger,” explained the Yahoo! Messenger Team.


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