Goodbye, GeoCities!

It's the official end of an already bygone era: GeoCities, the online, free web building and community site will be shuttering its doors before the end of the month. New accounts are no longer available, and users are encouraged to download their data from their server to their own personal computers or to move to Yahoo's paid hosting option.

GeoCities, one of the early, and once, very popular web hosting services of the pre-bubble-bursting era, reached its height arguably in 1999, when Yahoo! purchased the system for $3.57 billion in stock. Thereafter, the new TOS implemented by the new owners became very unpopular with users, with agreement terms that turned over ownership of "all rights and content, including media such as pictures" to Yahoo!, initiating a mass exodus from the GeoCities system.

Yahoo!, under new CEO Carol Bartz (replacing founder Jerry Yang), has been working actively to refocus the company and cut down on peripheral and unprofitable services. GeoCities was such a casualty.

But despite its waning popularity and periodically dubious policies, GeoCities will still holds its place in the context of Internet nostalgia and web history. Many a web developer probably had his or her start on the free system, back in the day of high school fan sites and high costs of hosting. What long time web user could forget the time GeoCities added in the hugely annoying GeoCities watermark to every site, and the headache of compatibility that caused? And even in its decline, the original branding power is undeniable. Despite consistent drops in viewership since 2006, internet analytics company Comscore still reported a whooping 11.5 million in unique visitors to the site in March 2009.

So goodbye GeoCities, and thanks for hosting our memories.