The service gained a lot of popularity and became the single largest free hosting service. In 1999, the beat of internet, Yahoo bought the company and continued the service flawlessly. But the popularity was on gradual decline because of better and more featureful options by other free service providers. But still, alot of users sticked to GeoCities.
During the last one year, Yahoo! has been continous decline. It started with the Microsoft’s interest to acquire the company. Though Yahoo declined the offer in interest of it’s investors and users.
Why is GeoCities shutting Down?
The reason specified on Yahoo’s site is pretty much unfair for the consumers and reverse for the company:
We have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in other ways. Beginning on October 26, 2009, you will no longer be able to use GeoCities to maintain a free presence online — but we’re excited about the other services we have designed to help you connect with friends and family and share your activities and interests.
We recommend our award-winning Web Hosting service, which works a lot like GeoCities but includes a personalized domain name (such as widgetdesigns.com) and matching email, terrific new site building tools, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, premium customer support, and more. See more on moving to Web Hosting.
Clearly, they are no longer encouraging free services. Reason being, they are already having a drowning business and they are cutting costs wherever possible. Primary reasons had been loss of interest and dis-investment- (CEO Bartz brings Trouble to Yahoo! Investors: $2Million Shares Cashed-out)
Whatever is going on inside Yahoo, we have only glimpse of it but what we know for sure is- It’s Not right for the company, not right for the users. Yahoo’s CEO Bartz said“We Have Never Been a Search Company”. Wow! I remember, I saw it growing from “a Search” to “Everything”.
Hey Yahoo, whatever you are doing, you are getting worse.Your market share is falling, economic state is worse, one of the main Inspiration: Carl Icahn, resigned; I no longer see a hope with left out business : stinky search (bing), outdated Email, IM. I hope you don’t shudown developers API, widgets, webservices, which most developers still use.
I wish… Yahoo had listened to Google.
Yahoo was the first love for several Internet users.