GeoCities Closing Down

[Andy Chalk]

GeoCities Closing Down

GeoCities [http://www.yahoo.com] later this year, bringing to a close the once-popular free hosting service that fell victim to the new breed of online social networks.

A specific closing date has not yet been announced but GeoCities is no longer accepting new customers, although existing accounts will remain unchanged for now. GeoCities parent Yahoo! said more details regarding the shutdown will be coming this summer but in the meantime, the company will help customers "explore and build new relationships online in other ways."

GeoCities was launched in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet and began offering free home pages to its users in 1995. In December of that year the name was changed to GeoCities and by mid-1997 it had grown to become one of the most popular destinations on the internet. Yahoo! purchased GeoCities in January 1999 for over $3.5 billion, one of the more glaring excesses of the dot-com bubble.

"I think GeoCities was the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet," MySpace [http://www.zdnet.com/] are so popular."

More information about the upcoming closure of GeoCities is available at the Yahoo! Help Center [http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/geocities-05.html].


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[Doug]

Wow, I had no idea these folks where still going. Ok, the actual pages were poor, but still, it was once like a milestone on the internets.

 

[Cousin_IT]

ah geocities. that brings back memories.

 

[Woe Is You]

Um, er...

Good riddance?

 

[Sevre]

Finally people advertising immortality shall be cast out onto the street!

 

[Nomad]

... I hosted my first websites on geocities. Until they started putting mandatory ads on them. Damn yahoo. Oh, the sadness...

 

[scotth266]

Err... What was Geocities again?

I had completely forgotten about this, though it was a giant of its time.

 

[Liverandbacon]

Hey another one bites the dust, down you go to join angelfire. I honestly thought this had gone under a while back, this takes me back to the old days of the net when everyones contact info had an @geocities site or @angelfire. Good times.

Wait, when did angelfire die? I don't really follow crappy free hosting sites, but I'm curious.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Geocities always used to take ages to load on my computer; I don't know why. Maybe it was the ads, maybe it was just Yahoo being a ***** on my download limit. Either way, I don't mind that it's gone.

 

[Paulrus_Keaton]

Awww... my first site was from there.

Better go salvage any nostalgic content before the shut down.

 

[Teh_Doomage]

Wow, they were still up and running?


Just wow.....

 

[rokudan]

Old school. Its like saying you had a PINE account or Telnet'ed to a MUD.

 

[Sewblon]

The depression strikes again. This is technically a depression, because it is a deflationary economic slowdown, and stock prices are worse than they were during The Great Depression.

 

[Doug]

Hey another one bites the dust, down you go to join angelfire. I honestly thought this had gone under a while back, this takes me back to the old days of the net when everyones contact info had an @geocities site or @angelfire. Good times.

Wait, when did angelfire die? I don't really follow crappy free hosting sites, but I'm curious.

Oh holy crap angelfire didnt go down, and for that matter lycos is still around as well. I really thought they had gone down, thanxs for pointing that out.

How on Earth is Lycos still around? It was a horrible service!

 

[cleverlymadeup]

i'm actually not sure who had/has more annoying pages myspace or geocities. both are pretty bad for the eyes

 

[mikecoulter]

I'm going to have to move my site :/

 

[PhoenixFlame]

I too had my first site on Geocities. Tokyo/Towers baby.

It's a historical marker, no doubt about that. Back when to have a mailing list you had to have your own connection and box and when the only search engine was someone's cobbled-together links page, Geocities was king. Anyone remember the unwieldy Geocities chat with the italic text and clumsy java? I sure do.

It's sad that it is being shut down, but like others in this thread, I was surprised it was still up, running, and even relevant.