Yahoo Groups, Yahoo’s long-running online discussion board is closing down, the latest service to do so since Yahoo was acquired by Verizon Communication Inc. in 2017.

The service, a combination of electronic mailing list and threaded internet forum, can be traced back to Yahoo Clubs in 1998.

Its current format was the result of Yahoo acquiring eGroups.com Inc., an email list management site at the peak of the first dot-com boom in August 2000 for $432 million. Yahoo Groups formally launched in January 2001.

Described by Slashgear as an “internet relic,” Yahoo Groups will shut down beginning Oct. 28. Users will no longer be allowed to post. On Dec. 14, all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. The Yahoo Groups site itself indicates that the service has next to no users in 2019, with the most recent message posted to the service, at least on the main page, dating back to January.

Yahoo Groups did have its fans back in the day, but unlike Yahoo Messenger, another Yahoo service shut down post-Verizon acquisition in 2018, it never quite hit the same level of popularity, however brief.

Few will mourn the passing of Yahoo Groups, but Verizon’s decision to delete all of its content has some concerned. Yahoo has form when it comes to shutting down and deleting historical content, having shut down Geocities way back in 2009. Users on the Subreddit r/DataHorder are discussing ways to download archives of particular Yahoo Groups pages, with one user noting, “I’m a member of a private one run by Cold War vets and a lot of the information and discussion there isn’t replaceable.”

The decision to close Yahoo Groups comes after Verizon sold Tumblr, another bad purchase by Yahoo throughout its long history, in August to Automattic Inc. for a nominal sum. Yahoo, then still a standalone company under the leadership of Marissa Mayer, acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion in May 2013.

Image: Yahoo