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Search on AmazonWhat Happened to Yahoo! Messenger?
ℹ️ Fate: Discontinued
The buzzy IM with Audibles, webcam chat, and the infamous window-shaking “Buzz.”
Yahoo! Messenger (originally Yahoo! Pager) was a fixture of late-1990s and 2000s online life—free IM with presence (away/idle), custom statuses, webcam chat, file transfer, group rooms, and playful features like Audibles and the window-shaking Buzz. It added mobile tie-ins and even a period of interoperability with MSN/Windows Live Messenger before the walled-garden era returned. As social networks, smartphones, and encrypted chat apps took over, usage fell. Yahoo discontinued the service in 2018 after attempting modern rewrites.
Timeline
- 1998
Launch as Yahoo! Pager; early desktop IM era begins.
- 1999
Renamed Yahoo! Messenger; adds webcam chat, file sharing, chat rooms, Audibles/Buzz.
- 2005
Introduces limited interoperability with MSN/Windows Live Messenger.
- 2012
Legacy chat rooms shut down as focus shifts to mobile/social.
- 2015
New Yahoo Messenger app launches; legacy client deprecated.
- 2018
Service discontinued; users offered chat history download window.
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