Official line
Yahoo Messenger discontinued.
Yahoo · Messaging · Product
Yahoo Messenger
Discontinued
1998–2018 · 20 years in market
Launched
Mar 9, 1998
Discontinued
Jul 17, 2018
Cause of death
Lost to a competitor
Evidence
Unsourced
What was it?
IM with avatars, buzz, and webcam. A default of the 2000s, shut in 2018 after the world moved to phones.
Why it died
Editorial reading
Desktop IM lost to mobile. Yahoo had no WhatsApp-scale identity and no reason to fight.
Founder takeaway
A chat network is only as strong as the device people carry. Desktop-first IM died with the PC-as-phone.
Sources
Unsourced — editorial reading
No primary source is attached yet. Treat the interpretation as editorial, not a citation.
What replaced it
Meta
WhatsApp
The address book became the identity.
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Same company, category, or cause of death.
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