Yahoo Groups Shutting Down
Yahoo (via Hacker News):
Yahoo has made the decision to no longer allow users to upload content to the Yahoo Groups site. Beginning October 21, you won’t be able to upload any more content to the site, and as of December 14 all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. You’ll have until that date to save anything you’ve uploaded.
“Uploaded” is referring to file attachments and the like. As far as I know, there’s no way to download the actual mailing list conversations, which are the bulk of most groups’ content. Lots of interesting and valuable information will be lost. Will anyone rescue it, à la DejaNews?
I love how the title of this announcement, “Understand what’s changing in Yahoo Groups,” downplays the what’s happening here. Unless you’re accustomed to these types of headlines, you might think that they’re just changing how avatars work, or something, and ignore it.
Groups.io seems like the best successor and is free for unlimited members, funded by premium features. It’s already being used by apple-dev and has instructions for transferring from Yahoo and Google. Another alternative is Gaggle, which is only free up to 20 members.
Update (2019-10-17): erincandescent:
Today it was announced that Yahoo! Groups is shutting down, and taking with it a piece of critical national infrastructure: the Oftel Yahoo Group which is used for managing UK phone number assignments.
This is terrible news for the Internet’s collective memory, just as it was when Yahoo purged GeoCities and AOL purged Hometown.
Update (2019-10-22): Josh Centers:
I’ve received a lot of messages about Yahoo Groups today. “Yeah, they’re shutting the website down, but I can still use the email list, right?”
Take the hint. It’s time to migrate.
Update (2020-10-14): Yahoo (via e-mail, Hacker News):
Beginning December 15, 2020 the Yahoo Groups website will shut down and members will no longer be able to send or receive emails from Yahoo Groups.
8 Comments RSS · Twitter
Need to move to Groups.io . It works well with some of my other former Yahoo! Groups...
There are various Yahoo groups downloader tools, I just used a chrome add on to get the messages off my group:
http://yahoogroupedia.pbworks.com/w/page/93006447/Chrome%20Application%20To%20Download%20Messages
The really dick move here is that they are taking away access to your group’s archive of past messages and the ability to view the group on the website instead of in email.
I used the Python-based Yahoo Groups Archiver mentioned in the HN comments. Took me about 2.5 hours to download 13500 messages and convert them to yearly text files (by default it saves as JSON), but it worked. Definitely read the Readme file as you need to go hunting through your Yahoo cookies to get the necessary configuration info to login to private groups. I'm in a Photoshop plugin developer email group that's been on Yahoo Groups for 20 years and I'd often search the email archives for technical info.
I got the impression from Yahoo's email that the yahoo mailing groups will keep working - only the web service gets shut down.
@Thomas Yeah, it wasn’t totally clear to me if they meant that administrators would still be able to contact the group via e-mail, or if the entire e-mail service would keep running. Either way, I think the archives are the most important part, and they are definitely shutting down.
My girlfriend's homeschooling group is effected by the closure. I know they are planning to migrate because of this change, but I am curious what they end up switching to in the end. This is a surprisingly meaningful change for some.
