WebProNews

Do you use Yahoo Briefcase? No? Well, you're not alone. In fact, so few people are using it that its shutting down entirely.

The service has been around about ten years, and usage has significantly declined over that time. Brigida Bergkamp with Yahoo Corporate Communications tells me that users outgrew the need for Yahoo Briefcase and turned to other offerings such as Yahoo Mail and Flickr, which have much more storage and enhanced capabilities.

It is not hard to see why users have outgrown Yahoo Briefcase, when the storage capacity has remained at 30MB throughout the years, despite the increasing need for larger amounts of space. Rather than increase the amount, they figured shutting it down was the better way to go.

"Discontinuing the service will allow us to focus our efforts on more broadly-used products, in line with our commitment to deliver the best possible user experience," says Bergkamp.

So what happens to those that still actually do use the service? What happens to their data?

"To provide account holders with ample time to move their files and close their accounts, we posted a notification on the Yahoo! Briefcase site on January 28, along with information on how users can download their files to their computers," says Bergkamp. "E-mails to all users who have ever stored a file in Yahoo! Briefcase started going out the very next day. "

Users have until March 30th of this year to either download or delete their files before they can kiss them goodbye. After that date, access will be blocked and files will be deleted.