It is the end of the Internet age. Yahoo Answers will officially close on May 4, 2021. Yahoo made the announcement earlier this month, although it also noted that today, April 20, 2021, will be the last day users will be able to submit questions and answers. After today, the site will be effectively shut down before going down next month. Yahoo Answers is one of the oldest Internet Q&A platforms in history, dating back to 2005. You better hurry if you need to know the answer to “Did dragons live before, during, or after dinosaurs? “
Yahoo Answers has seen its popularity wane over the years, thanks to Reddit and Quora, though it has consistently released quality memes and comic relief. John Oliver and the Last week tonight The team paid tribute to the Q&A platform with some selected questions two weeks ago, in which several people returned to the site for the first time in years to find more gems. Stephen Hawking even turned to the “knowledge sharing” platform in 2006 to ask, “How can the human race survive the next 100 years?” The question quickly garnered nearly 1,600 responses in a matter of hours.
At the height of its popularity, Yahoo Answers was one of the most visited referral sites on the Internet, with more than 120 million visits per month in 2007. Anyone could ask the questions and anyone could give the answers, leading to some trouble along the way. Questions like, “Why does the stomach make strange noises when it is hungry?” and “How do traffic lights detect a car?” received ridiculous responses, along with “Can babies see ghosts?” and “How do I disable Caps Lock?”
When caught for stealing an idea for his short film in 2013, actor Shia LaBeouf, like many people around the world, turned to Yahoo Answers for much-needed help. LaBeouf ended up plagiarizing a question from the site posted in 2009 for his apology. It was entitled: “Why did Picasso say, ‘Good artists copy but great artists steal'”? LeBeouf took more than a few lines from the site with, “Copying is not particularly creative work. Taking inspiration from someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work,” capturing most of the attention. The actor later told his Twitter followers that he “screwed up” by addressing the situation.
Yahoo issued a statement in early April explaining why they were removing the Yahoo Questions. It turns out that the drop in popularity was the main factor in deciding to withdraw it. They noted that the needs of their users have “changed”, which they have decided to focus on going forward. “To that end, we have decided to divert our resources from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise to provide reliable, premium content,” the statement read. While it’s the end of an era, the end of Yahoo Questions will also help stop the overabundance of misinformation on the web. You can go to the official Yahoo help page for information about your account, along with your posted questions and answers.
Topics: Star Wars Day
Reference-movieweb.com
