Yahoo Groups was launched in January 2001. That was the time when dotcom websites were being created. Its objective was to help people “build relationships, stay in touch, share ideas, and discuss interests through the convenience of popular e-mail and Web-based tools.” Over time it became very popular and by the year 2010 Yahoo Groups had over 115 million users with over 10 million groups. But with the popularity of new social media platforms like Facebook and Orkut, Yahoo Groups became outdated for people.
Yahoo even tried to attract people by adding unique features like creating smaller subgroups so that people can send more secure private messages to others. But this was not enough for people so the platform was becoming desolated.
This is when Yahoo decided to shut down Yahoo Groups. Recently Yahoo announced that after 14th December people will not be able to send any content in Yahoo groups and all the data will be deleted. Yahoo sent a mail to all the users quoting “Privacy is critical and we have taken this decision to better align with our overall principles. If you would like to keep any of the content you’ve posted or stored in your Yahoo Group, please download it by December 14. Photos and files can be saved right from the Yahoo Groups site, or you can download your data from the Privacy Dashboard”
Users can download their data from their groups or they can request Yahoo to add their data on Yahoo servers. This process may take up to 30 days to complete. Yahoo Groups website will still not be taken down, All public groups will have their privacy settings altered to either private or restricted. People can communicate in groups via searching and email for private groups, with admins holding access rights
To download your data from groups, sigh-in to yahoo account. Got to the dashboard and click on “Groups”, This will give you the list all your groups. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner and select “Groups Download Manager.” The download manager will ask you for your email so that yahoo can notify you when your download is ready.