The storied history of Yahoo had seemingly come to an end earlier this year, with the news that Verizon Wireless had purchased the Internet assets of Yahoo Inc. for a cool $4.83 Billion. Of course, for Verizon, they clearly see a lot of value in the brand and their assets, but just what they intend to do with Yahoo is still unclear. For now, Yahoo appears to be chugging along as it has done for the past five years or so. On Android, they’ve been introducing new and interesting apps for some time now, and their Yahoo Messenger app has just been updated to support the sending of videos, too.
While many of you will of course use nothing but Hangouts as well as WhatsApp, there are a few good reasons to use Yahoo Messenger. For one, it has a desktop app for both Windows as well as macOS, while Hangouts asks you to use an extension from Chrome itself, or just the web. On top of this, Yahoo Messenger now makes it really easy to send GIFs back and forth to friends or group chats, all users need to do is type “/gif” followed by a search term to get a random GIF relating to that search term. GIFs are fun and all, but sometimes that Vine or funny clip you saw on Facebook is where it’s really at, and now, Yahoo Messenger allows users to send videos up to one minute in length to either a one-on-one chat or a group chat whenever and wherever you are.
Yahoo also has a number of interesting apps on Android as well, such as Yahoo Mail, their News Digest app and of course, Yahoo Sports. This latest update might only seem small, but it is at the very least a reminder that Yahoo is still alive and kicking, if only for the moment. Whether or not these apps will end up being branded as Verizon apps is unclear, but it is unlikely, given that the Yahoo brand is something that still resonates with a lot of people out there on the Web, even today. Those that haven’t given Yahoo Messenger a try can install it from clicking the button below and downloading it from the Play Store.