The death of a web host; the Internet says goodbye to GeoCities

Posted by kent on October 27th, 2009

In the relatively short history of the web, GeoCities is a bit of a marker. The service has been providing beginning web publishers with free web hosting since 1994. That is, up until yesterday when Yahoo! finally shuttered the site. Things on the web have changed in the last fifteen years, and the ad-supported service was feeling like a relic from a time before blogs, Facebook, wikis, and inexpensive web hosting.

In my usual role of 'old guy on the web' at NextAdvisor, I remember when a lot of sites were hosted on GeoCities (along with the surprisingly extant Angelfire). In 1999, when was I testing search engine relevance for one-time search-giant Inktomi (coincidentally, it too was bought by Yahoo!), GeoCities sites were often in the results. By 2009, as they say, not so much. Now, GeoCities is a custom 404 page.

In 1994, no one would have thought web hosting was important enough to justify spending $60 to $120 per year. Only universities and a few well-known web-savvy brand names had their own domains. Now many people count web hosting costs as a necessary expenditure, right up there with their cel phone, cable, TIVO, and NetFlix fees.

So, farewell GeoCities. You helped make the web what it is today.