If you are in your late 20s or early 30s, then the words "Yahoo Messenger" should instantly evoke a sense of nostalgia.

So it is with a heavy heart we have to write this, but after 20 years of existence Yahoo Messenger will permanently shut down on July 17, bringing down the curtains on one of the oldest online chat applications still in existence.

Earlier today Oath, which owns Yahoo Messenger, announced that the service is officially being discontinued from July 17 onwards. The company's taking this step to evaluate how it can stay competitive in the instant messaging space, currently dominated by Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and other mobile apps.

Yahoo Messenger debuted way back in March of 1998 as Yahoo Pager, in the early days of the Internet when instant messaging was very much done on desktop PCs, as a faster and cheaper alternative to email and SMSes, respectively.

According to a Techcrunch report, Oath doesn't have a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger. But that they're "constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta)."

Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo's currently testing out, and if you're interested in trying it out you can request access to its beta.

Over the last 20 years, easily several hundreds of millions of people actually used Yahoo Messenger. And while it's shutting down next month, Oath says your Yahoo ID will still continue to work for accessing other services like Yahoo Mail and other services.

So long, Yahoo Messenger, and thanks for all the memories!

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