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Comment by username223 | Hacker News Reader

When Yahoo finally dies, my main concern is what happens to the @yahoo.com email address I've had for a couple of decades, and which now lives next to my name in countless address books. Does it perpetually forward to an address I choose? Does Yahoo try to charge for this? Do Russian identity thieves buy the domain and make my life hell?

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Yahoo mail probably makes a pretty good penny. Yahoo isn't going to die, IMHO, its just going to be separated off, with the unprofitable bits discarded. It'll probably end up as, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance.

I think Yahoo makes a great case study on how optimizing for revenue per user can kill your brand.

Entirely dependent on who decides to buy Y! Mail. Safe to assume it'll be around for a while though, since straight killing Y! Mail doesn't make much business sense.

If Yahoo could find a way to start charging for legacy Yahoo email addresses without enraging a sufficient portion of the installed base, they could have a pretty lucrative business right there.

I've got a list of maybe 50 accounts including a couple of relatively important ones that still use my Yahoo address. It's been on my todo list for months to get them updated. I guess it's time to bump up the priority on that item.

I've tried moving away from my Yahoo account a couple of times already. Some services simply refuse to change your email address, no matter what.

There's a bunch of smart TV's out there that are tied to Yahoo services (Vizio at least, probably others) for basic things like app installation. I hope they at least transition smoothly...

Probably the last one - look at what happened to Geocities.

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