On April 23, 2009, Yahoo! announced that it would be closing its United States branch of GeoCities, and stopped accepting new registrations, though the existing GeoCities accounts remained active.[3] In late June 2009, Yahoo! updated the GeoCities home page to indicate: "GeoCities is closing on October 26, 2009."[2] GeoCities joined a long list of other services discontinued by Yahoo such as: Farechase, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase and Yahoo! for Teachers.[18]
With the closure of GeoCities in the U.S., Yahoo! no longer offers free webpage hosting except in Japan.[19] Yahoo! encouraged users to upgrade their accounts to the fee-based Yahoo! Web Hosting service.[20][21]
Rupert Goodwins, the editor of ZDNet, perceived the closure of GeoCities as an end of an era; he described GeoCities as "the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet."[19] Vijay Mukhi, an internet and cyber security expert quoted in the Business Standard, criticized Yahoo's handling of GeoCities; Mukhi described GeoCities as "a lost opportunity for Yahoo! They could have made it a Facebook if they wanted." Rich Skrenta, the CEO of Blekko, posted on Twitter an offer to take over GeoCities from Yahoo! in exchange for 50% future revenue share.[22]
In response to the closure, rival webhosting services began to compete for the web sites leaving GeoCities. For instance, German web host Jimdo started the "Lifeboat for GeoCities" service to encourage GeoCities users to put their websites on Jimdo.[11][23] Geocities-closing.com, started by GeoCities competitor uCoz, is a similar project launched to save GeoCities websites.[24]
--Previous Message--
: Wow....that's interesting...wonder what
: happened?
: I could swear I was just there on Tony's
: site recently but so much has gone on since
: October that could have been the last time I
: was there.
:
: Thanks Mel.
: Such a shame since Joanna(that correct?) had
: alot of good stuff...hope she starts another
: one soon and lets his fans know.
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: I can't speak for Tony's website but all
: Geocities websites were shut down and
: removed in October, I think. I got e-mails
: about the impending shut-down for months
: before it happened. I just checked Terry's
: old site and it's gone.
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: What happened to Tony's Geocities website?
: I was just there a couple of weeks ago and
: now when I tried to look at it the site has
: "closed".
: I know the webmistress had been sick before
: ....did she get sick again and have to give
: it up? She had some great stuff on there and
: even said Tony was going to do a fan
: "chat" soon......
:
:
:
:
:
:
Message Thread
« Back to index