Yahoo has put a date on when the service will close, after stating in April that it was no longer accepting new accounts.
"GeoCities is closing on October 26, 2009," the site said. "On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files.
"If you'd like to move your web site, or save the images and other files you've posted online, please act now by downloading your files or upgrading to Yahoo! Web Hosting," Yahoo said.
For many GeoCities was where our first website lived. It could also be considered one of the web's first communities. Originally divided into neighborhoods (which seemed reminiscent of the worst of California tract housing), it was a place where you could attempt to communicate with the world on a static page you got for free. Later the neighborhoods gave way to a more modern, easier and meaningful means of identifying them: www.geocities.com/username.
With limited tools, obtrusive banner ads and tight bandwidth limitations a popular site risked getting throttled. I can't remember the last time I saw a live GeoCities page.
Yahoo is the current proprietor of the site--a business they purchased in the late 90s for nearly $3.6 billion. Seriously, what were they thinking?
They're suggesting GeoCities' users move to Yahoo Web Hosting. It's one last try to get some cash out of the site. Webring also said in May that they would assist users to move their sites over to its network, giving them 50 Mbytes of free storage or a gigabyte for its premium service.
How sadly final of Yahoo to say "GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web."
The name GeoCities will continue bring back fond memories for lots of the web's early adopters. Like the recent Compuserve announcement, however, most of us thought it was already gone.
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