US tech company Yahoo will discontinue its legacy Messenger service used by large sections of the energy and commodity industries for written conversations on August 5, 2016, it said late Friday.
The company announced the move in a progress report on product prioritization.
It is now focusing on a new messenger service geared to social media users, not traders and energy market professionals.
"We encourage you to upgrade to the new Yahoo Messenger ahead of time, as versions 11.5 (Windows), 3.0 (Mac), 1.x (Android) and below, and older versions of Yahoo Messenger for iOS will be discontinued," said Yahoo, adding that a date of August 5 had been set.
The new platform records conversations on the cloud and allows users to delete their chat history, something compliance officers at trading companies are unlikely to agree to, market sources have said.
Traders said it was not immediately obvious what tool would be favored by the trading industry as a replacement for Yahoo. But all agreed Yahoo's announcement will start the search for a new tool.
London-based oil traders and brokers Monday expressed surprise at the forthcoming loss of such a widely used tool.
"It's a shock for our industry," said one, adding the technology is widely shared and used by traders.
A second trader said: "We are looking into it. There's no clear solution at this stage. Amongst other solutions, there are ICE, Reuters, Bloomberg, Whatsapp, etc."
The vast majority of energy and commodity traders worldwide rely on the legacy Yahoo Messenger platform to exchange market information as well as market bids, offers and transactions.
Other messaging software such as Skype, QQ, ICE Instant Messenger, Reuters, Bloomberg and Symphony is also used, but Yahoo is by far the most prevalent.
Yahoo was not available to comment.
