Yahoo! abandoning GeoCities

April 23, 2009 Yahoo! sais it is abandoning GeoCities

A Yahoo sign is seen in Times Square in New York. Yahoo! said Thursday it will close its GeoCities service that provides people a free online locale for home pages.

Yahoo! said Thursday it will close its GeoCities service that provides people a free online locale for home pages.

The announcement comes two days after the struggling Internet pioneer posted lackluster earnings and its newly enthroned chief executive assured investors that the company is focusing its resources on core strengths.

"We will be closing GeoCities later this year," Yahoo! said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

"As part of Yahoo!'s ongoing effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers and results for advertisers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others."

GeoCities is a web hosting service founded in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet and bought by Yahoo! for more than three billion dollars during the height of the infamous dot-com boom in Silicon Valley.

GeoCities provided people with tools to build interactive websites and eventually added chat forums and other community-oriented features. A notice at GeoCities on Thursday said it is no longer accepting new accounts.

Yahoo! added fee premium services in an effort to make money at GeoCities, which had trouble retaining users and getting profitable.

GeoCities joins a list of recently discontinued Yahoo! services including Farechase, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase and Yahoo! for Teachers, according to the Sunnyvale, California-based firm.

Rate this story - 2 /5 (2 votes)

rank
1
2
3
4
5

view popular

Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.

Display comments: newest first

earls - Apr 23, 2009
- Rank: not rated yet
The end of an era. Good riddance to the cancer known as GeoCities. Oh man, I hope tripod doesn't shut down next, what will Neil do? How will Vulvox continue their ground breaking research?
- report abuse
- - Current rank
  - 1
  - 2
  - 3
  - 4
  - 5

Other News

Eco-friendly building techniques don't have to significantly raise construction costs

Technology / Energy

1hour ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

Home builder Lance Schmidt hears it all the time: Green building costs more. But he and his colleagues are out to prove otherwise.

Framed for child porn -- by a PC virus

Technology / Internet

19 hours ago | 5 / 5 (5) | 3

(AP) -- Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.

A system of space solar power system (SSPS)

Japan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

Technology / Energy

Nov 08, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (15) | 20

It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan's space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

Dartmouth professor finds that iconic Oswald photo was not faked

Professor finds that iconic Oswald photo was not faked (w/ Video)

Technology / Computer Sciences

Nov 05, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (9) | 38

(PhysOrg.com) -- Dartmouth Computer Scientist Hany Farid has new evidence regarding a photograph of accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Farid, a pioneer in the field of digital forensics, digitally ...

Car That Runs on Compressed Air Questioned by Critics (w/ Video)

Technology / Energy

Nov 03, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (21) | 34

(PhysOrg.com) -- As electric cars begin breaking into the short-distance vehicle market, one French company thinks that it has an alternative to the electric vehicle: a car that runs on compressed air. Motor ...