Some of you might remember going online to talk to millions of people online on Yahoo! Chat on practically every topic you could imagine, or you probably went there to meet new people. Whether you made this a weekly (or even a daily) thing, it’s now gone—Yahoo! has decided to axe their public chat feature.
“Sometimes, this means we have to make tough decisions—like closing down features that we feel aren’t adding enough value for you. This helps us spend more energy on creating experiences that make Yahoo! the most fun way to spend your time,” Yahoo! said in a blog post. “With this in mind, we have decided to discontinue several Yahoo product features. This will enable us to refocus our efforts on modernizing our core Yahoo products experiences and of course, create new ones.”
Yahoo! Chat has come under fire as a place for pedophiles to meet underage children in the 2000s through user-created chat rooms. In 2005, users could no longer create their own chat rooms, and Yahoo! Chat was eventually restricted to 18 and older users. Along with public chat rooms, Pingbox and Windows Live Messenger interoperability are all scheduled to be removed on December 14, and some other features will disappear on January 30.