Launched as a knowledge-sharing platform on June 28, 2005, and quickly populated entirely with Batman villains, aliens pretending to be human, and that one weird neighbor you’d rather climb down your fire escape in a blizzard than get caught in a conversation with, Yahoo Answers was a place for users to ask questions, now matter how bizarre, and provide other users with answers, no matter how out of left field those answers might be. Unfortunately for the truth-seekers of the world, Yahoo announced Monday that Yahoo Answers will be permanently shut down on May 4, after which the site will redirect to the Yahoo homepage.
Prior to its shuttering, Yahoo Answers will temporarily become a read-only site on April 20. The change, Yahoo notes, only affects Yahoo Answers and none of its other sites, like Yahoo Search or email. If you’re a frequenter of Yahoo Answers, you can request to download your content until June 30. If you were more of a “posting dumb stuff to make my high-school friends laugh†user, however, you can just watch the end of an internet era with a wistful smile instead.
On Monday, the Verge published an email reportedly sent to active Yahoo Answers users explaining the decision. “While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed,†the letter says in part. “To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content.â€
Now, if you want to know if you successfully turned your boyfriend into a vampire or if birds have two birthdays, you’ll have to look inside your heart for the answer. Or just post your question to Twitter; people over there would have a field day with this kind of thing.