Ten years after Yahoo! acquired GeoCities for a paltry $4 billion, the (in)famous free hosting site is being put to rest. It’s been a long time since I visited a Geocities site that wasn’t Free Your Brain, and those I have been to (in search of rare patches for old games, or forgotten and eldritch documents) have been left untended for years and exhibit a quaint pre-millennium website design. We make fun, but GeoCities was one of the pillars of the blooming web, and shared its growing pains as well. I’ll always remember it fondly as a place for crackpots, warez, and web tenderfoots trepidatiously entering the World Wide Wilderness.
Yahoo! hasn’t struck the final blow yet, but they’re letting everyone know that will certainly be later this year.
After careful consideration, Yahoo! has decided to close GeoCities later this year. You can continue enjoying your GeoCities service until then — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We’ll share more details this summer. For now, please visit the help center for more information.
In honor of all the great content that’s been put up over the years, TechCrunch is having a little giveaway. Find the most offensive web design on GeoCities that you can and comment it in there, maybe you’ll win a shirt.