I know it is a couple months old, but being me, some things need some cool off time, like why in the world is Yahoo! closing Geocities? Believe me, I did need the time. I had to go out of my way to go and download old files before I forgot. Being me, October 2009 would have rolled around and I would have lost some of my old writing.
I remember the days when I ran some Yahoo! Clubs (which has been Yahoo! Groups for close to a decade) and had some Geocities hosted website. The banner ads were obtrusive, but at that time, I was still learning web design and only cared that at least I had some space. I tried Freewebs (which is now just Webs.com) and even Homestead and Tripod.
A long time ago, when I joined Geocities, I had to join a certain ‘street’ and then park on a lot number. Later, Yahoo! allowed users to have their username in the URL. So many sites and yet Yahoo! is closing it. Unfortunately, the ‘award’ winner webhosting they offer is junk. I have seen more complaints than anything with their hosting. Is it because of Geocities? It is because of the economy and something had to be cut. Yahoo! does not give much of a reason in their Geocities help section on “Why is Geocities closing?”
On the other hand, they seem like authorities evacuating a toxic spill zone by redirecting them to other services. Not only that, Yahoo! 360 and Geocities! Plus (offered to their AT&T clients) are also closing. I just want to say – this is Yahell! (That is an old phrase.)
Is Geocities too much to handle or worthless to be bought by another company?
I was actually angry myself when I read they were closing Geocities, but in the end I guess it didn’t matter as they deleted my old site I had there due to it “not being updated.” But there were so many websites hosted there it is a shame to see it being closed.
I had a redirection set on my old site. Obviously even if it was not updated, it was getting traffic going through it.
It is a shame as there are people learning like everyone else did, and it was a great opportunity. In my opinion, it was one of the more flexible freehosts when it came to what you could put on your page.
I’m really into fandom and all things fannish. So much history is potentially going to be lost with Geocities closing. It is hard to even begin to grasp how to start trying to do any mass documenting of fandom on Geocities to preserve that history. 🙁 Makes me sad. On the other hand, it is pushing us to save some things that we might not otherwise have done.
Yahoo’s decision is wrong.. flatly wrong… and they will regret it… Geocities was the pioneer in FREE webhosting…
many decent sites are still out there… Many comes in Google search… Yahoo failed to utilize the power of free sites… Instead tried to make money from geocities paid sites…
Totally wrong to get rid of such a legend!
Geocities sites are archived at least at 3 sites now
reocities.com, geocities.ws and oocities.com
Also though Google removed all hits to direct geocities links, many other pages do have reference to old geocities pages. Google cannot remove them…
Many new guys and youngsters are impressed by blogs and facebooks etc But blog and facebook are not substitute for a welldesigned web page. Blogs are like scribbled notes. Blogger is not really serious when he scribbles something…
Web pages will survive and outlive any fad on the net… Then One will yet again see and realize how foolish Yahoo was to remove such an early footprint of the dawn of www!!!