Goodbye GeoCities, Rest in Peace

Its a sad day today, GeoCities, the service that hosted the first ever website has died. In case you've got some data we suggest you get it before Yahoo pulls the plug on it.

Selected pieces of Internet history will however be preserved thanks to Archive Team’s Geocities Project which is busy archiving as many GeoCities pages as possible. In case you didn't already know, GeoCities allowed anyone to build a custom Web page for free and reserved a small amount of virtual storage to keep pictures and documents. It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet.

GeoCities stopped accepting new registrations earlier this year. But why is GeoCities closing at all? Its is still one of the top 200 networks in the world, according to Alexa. "Yahoo continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences," according to a company spokeswoman. GeoCities' closing is "part of our ongoing effort to prioritize our portfolio of products and services in order to deliver the best products to consumers."

Using Geocities you could make basic webpages for free, and later if you didn't want their ads on it, you could pay a small fee. GeoCities made Yahoo a household name and became one of the top five players in the world when it launched back in 1998. Some say that the story of GeoCities this decade is one of a skydive from the clouds without a parachute or supervision and a sack of missed opportunities. Others say that "Yahoo never knew the value of GeoCities."

Now let's take a moment of silence. Goodbye GeoCities, RIP.