I have decided, as of this morning, to finally delete my Yahoo! account.

History

I first started with Yahoo! very shortly after they began offering chat and e-mail services. Actually, even before then, they were my search/directory of choice until Google took the innertubes by storm. If I remember correctly, I brought my first Yahoo! account online sometime in 1997. At the time, I was looking for an alternative to AOL for Instant Messaging and chat, as AOL was still a closed IM system (AIM did not yet exist), Yahoo! fit the bill primarily because it didn’t lock me to an application. I could use Yahoo! chat within my browser, which was fantastic.

The End Is Here

If you’ve read anything I’ve posted in the past, you already know that I absolutely detest spammers and scammers with every fiber of my innertube-riding being. I think of them like the aliens in Independence Day, latching on to a new planet and consuming its resources until there is nothing left but an empty shell. In this case, spammers latch on to services and abuse them to the point of making them completely unusable. While there are plenty of Yahoo! users that continue and love to use the service, I have finally had enough.

For the last several years, my Yahoo! account has been relegated entirely to chatting with two or three people that I contact once in a while. This is not enough for me to keep it going, particularly when I recieve roughly 15 spam messages every week. My Cost-Benefit Analysis has shown that the hassle of the spammers far outweighs the convenience of  communication with three people. I have their e-mail addresses, and I will encourage them to switch, as well.

Farewell

So, Yahoo!, this is it. Goodbye, so long, farewell, auf…. let’s not go there, shall we?