Categories
Blog Archives
The death of a web host; the Internet says goodbye to GeoCities
October 27th, 2009 - Posted by Kent
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.
Leave a Reply
Popular Services Reviewed:
Credit Monitoring Services |
Find Us On:
Copyright© 2006 - 2012 NextAdvisor.com - All rights reserved.
Disclosure: NextAdvisor.com is a consumer information site that offers free, independent reviews and ratings of online services. We receive advertising revenue from most of the services we review. Our editors thoroughly research and whenever possible test each service we review and offer their honest opinions about each one. We are independently owned and operated and all opinions expressed on this site are our own.