Yahoo shuts down GeoCities

Yahoo has decided to pull the plug on GeoCities, one of the earliest web hosting sites.

Although the site has not been used for the longest time, its name will always be marked in the minds of early adopters. From time to time, dead GeoCities pages still register and show in search engine results.

Yahoo said that the GeoCities page will no longer appear in the Web starting October 26, 2009. The search engine said that users who want to save files that are uploaded on their GeoCities page should download their data now or upgrade to Yahoo! Web hosting.

Launched in 1994, many internet gurus consider GeoCities as the first dwelling place of their websites. It can also be considered as one of the Web’s first online communities.

With few tools, distracting banner ads, and limited bandwidth capacities, most GeoCities pages were destined to go obsolete.

Yahoo acquired the site in the late 90’s for $3.6M, when the company was scouting for new marquees that had potential.