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Net pioneer GeoCities finally laid to rest

Victoria Ho ZDNet Asia | October 27, 2009 5:44 AM PDT

Summary

Yahoo shut down GeoCities the site that offered a free platform for users to create their own Web sites during the dot-com boom. Yahoo paid $4.5 billion for it.

Topics

Yahoo! Inc., GeoCities, Portals, Web Technology, Internet, Web Site Development, Channel Management, Web Hosting, Marketing, Yahoo, closings, Victoria Ho ZDNet Asia
The closure of GeoCities marks the end of an era, as the Internet community says goodbye to the pioneering Web site creation and hosting service portal.

Yahoo shut down the site Monday, 10 years after it bought the Web property for almost US$3.6 billion in stock--though the value was later revised to US$4.5 billion.

The Internet giant in April posted a notice on the GeoCities site highlighting plans to take it down and not archive its content. The company advised users to save their content offline or move their pages to Yahoo's paid Web hosting service.

The loss of GeoCities, which provided for many a first foray into the world of self-publishing on the World Wide Web, sparked several efforts to preserve the portal. Nonprofit organization Internet Archive, which seeks to back up and make archived copies of sites online, announced a project dedicated to provide a "deep and thorough" archive of GeoCities' sites.

For more, read "Net pioneer GeoCities finally laid to rest" from ZDNet Asia.

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Waste of money!
rupaa62 29th Oct 2009
For what Yahoo paid for GeoCities it looks like it was a financial bust for yahoo.
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Rest in peace GeoCities....
Ceridan 27th Oct 2009
NT
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Before they were bought, they were ahead of their time.
CobraA1 27th Oct 2009
Before they were bought, they were way ahead of their
time, trying to add a social aspect to web hosting.

After they were bought, they turned pretty crappy
quickly. This closing only proves that being bought by
Yahoo was ultimately one of the worst things that could
happen to GeoCities.

They will be missed, though.
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RE: Net pioneer GeoCities finally laid to rest
Loverock Davidson 27th Oct 2009
R.I.P. Geocities, it was like I was just making my first web page with you only yesterday.
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RE: Net pioneer GeoCities finally laid to rest
crazydanr@... 27th Oct 2009
I will miss you Geocities, with your blinking fuscia H1 text and your under construction gif of a guy shoveling...
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Who's going to host the click fraud sites now?
ejhonda 27th Oct 2009
It was great having to hunt down bad guys using references to my employer to game search results and post up tons of pages for what appeared to be click fraud & malware distribution. I even got to flex my German language skills and even hacked some Geocities Japan pages in order to submit TOS complaints, since Geocities US wouldn't handle issues for Geocities Germany or Japan. Great times.
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The end of an era *sigh*
JTF243@... 27th Oct 2009
As Cobra said, they will be missed.
Like Loverock, GeoCities was my first foray into web design, using Publisher.
When Yahoo bought them out, I was afraid this was going to be the end result. sad
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It helped me make my frist web page
samzbest@... 27th Oct 2009
I will miss you geocities

http://thetechnologycafe.com/a-tribute-to-yahoo-geocities-a-platform-that-helped-form-the-web/
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Free model starting to crumble?
terry flores Updated - 27th Oct 2009
Reasons why Geocities died:
- Obnoxious ads
- Spam/malware abuse
- Didn't keep up with Myspace and Facebook
- Not promoted enough (Yahoo just let it die)

But most importantly, I think it died because free services all over the web are being killed off in favor of paid services. As the sucker investors are finally catching on, free just doesn't ever make a payback, except in the rare case where you are able to find even dumber suckers to unload the company on (like Yahoo).

The free ride on the web is over.
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Interesting contradiction...
jasonp@... Updated - 28th Oct 2009
You mention both Myspace and Facebook as reasons why Geocities died and then go on to say "I think it died because free services all over the web are being killed off in favor of paid services." Notice how you managed to contradict yourself within the space of just a few words? And people think our public schools aren't putting out quality thinkers...
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Only partly right.
Socratesfoot 29th Oct 2009
Geocities died because generally anything Yahoo touches dies. Companies like Yahoo aren't big risk takers like Google, they don't have a lot of capital to force trends like Microsoft, and they lack the imagination and marketing prowess of smaller companies like twitter...basically they are devoid of anything that would make them competitive in technology as anything other than a minor player and will probably go the way of Aol.
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RE: Net pioneer GeoCities finally laid to rest
rushingturtle 28th Oct 2009
Don't be mean jasonp.

Not all of us were valedictorian of our class.
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Waste of money!
rupaa62 29th Oct 2009
For what Yahoo paid for GeoCities it looks like it was a financial bust for yahoo.

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