ANGALORE, INDIA: As of December 14, 2012, all public chat rooms on Yahoo! Messenger have been shut down as part of a series of features being changed. While some users agree with the move, a majority of users of Yahoo chat are upset and have unleashed their rage on online forums.

''We have decided to discontinue several Yahoo! product features. This will enable us to refocus our efforts on modernizing our core Yahoo! products experiences and of course, create new ones,'' Yahoo had said in a web post earlier this month.

Yahoo has stopped some of the most popular products features and services that include Yahoo! Messenger public chat rooms and messenger Pingbox. As per the new changes, Pingbox will no longer be available on Yahoo Messenger and the company will assist users to uninstall Pingbox from blogs or social networks. Besides, Yahoo Messenger is no longer interoperable with Microsoft Windows Live messenger since yesterday.

Users upset with this decision have also started an online petition against closing down Yahoo Messenger public chat rooms. The petition called 'Stop Yahoo from closing down their chat rooms' is available on the website - www.thepetitionsite.com. Already around 386 users from around the globe have signed this online petition against Yahoo and the number is still growing.