A few months ago it was revealed that Yahoo had sealed the fate of GeoCities, one of the pioneers of the emerging Internet years ago. Fifteen years of service came to a halt when Yahoo told everyone still using the service that it would be shutting down, encouraging them to move on to something better. Now, true to their word, Yahoo has finally pulled the plug on the free web-hosting service. Where the Geocities homepage once stood, Yahoo has substitute a placeholder that confirms today as the final day for service.
The shutdown date has been available for some time, giving anyone who was still relying on the service a chance to fetch any data they wanted and make plans to move on. There's no mention of just how many people still used the service, though I imagine it wasn't very many. Numbers aside, there's still a feeling of nostalgia I get when thinking about GeoCities. For many of us, it was one of the most common first experiences on the Internet, and was one of the first services that ever tried to cater to neophyte web users who wanted to make a name for themselves.
Yahoo is offering to migrate any existing users over to their hosted services. Their disposal of GeoCities is part of their greater plan to improve company profits, which has been an important concern after a series of failed mergers and service cuts.