Last day for 20-year old Yahoo Messenger, to take new avatar in Squirrel

Launched as Yahoo Pager 20 years ago, the famous messaging service-Yahoo Messenger is breathing its last day today (July 17, 2018).

Yahoo Messenger will no longer be supported after July 17, 2018. Until then, you can continue to use the service normally. After July 17, you'll no longer be able to access your chats and the service will no longer work, Yahoo said on its blog.

However, Yahoo did not put out an official word on whether it is coming up with any replacement for Yahoo Messenger. But according to its site, indications are clearly in favour of Squirrel.

"We're constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta)," Yahoo further said adding it is focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.

Log-in will be disabled from today. However, Messenger users will get six months to download their chat history.

In May, Yahoo had launched a new iOS and Android messaging app called Squirrel, focused specifically on friend, family and workgroups that want to exchange messages and share photos, links and other media.

Launched in 1998, Yahoo messenger saw a sharp growth. Being an early player, within three years of its operation it had the user base of 11 million, this is at a time when internet penetration in India was very low. It also introduced emojis and stickers, even before they became popular.

In the next eight-year, it saw user base climbing to 122 million. In 2012 it launched MSN Messenger, which was shut down in 2014.

In recent years, it failed to outdo modern services Whatsapp (created by its ex-employee ) Hike, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

Among the many reasons that led to its failure, it wasn't as fast as its competitors (Like Gmail) in controlling spam emails. The sudden closing of public chat room was also one of the reasons that did not go well with its users.