While GeoCities is gone, fond memories last forever
When GeoCities was launched in 1995, it offered millions of people the chance to make their first web sites. As web hosting sites go, it was fairly rudimentary, but it was also free. Comedians, writers, musicians, hobbyists, and anyone else who wanted to share their thoughts with the world now had the opportunity to do so. The “typical” GeoCities page is crude by today’s standardsanimated GIFs, flashing text, hideous background wallpaperbut back then no one seemed to care.And then, in 2009, Yahoo! (which purchased GeoCities in 1999) announced that it would be shutting GeoCities down. This move received criticism from several sectors: market analysts, security experts, rival companies who wanted to purchase the hosting service rather than have it shut down. The users were at a loss for what to do, and other web hosting services offered “lifeboat” services for people to leave the sinking GeoCities ship. On October 27, 2009, GeoCities became unavailable, and those sites that had not been transferred were thought to have been lost forever.However, thanks to the work of digital internet historians, that’s no longer the case. GeoCities is still shut down (except in Japan), but almost every site ever made can still be viewed, as a testament to a bygone era. Jason Scott of the Archive Team is just one person who felt that the GeoCities sites were historically relevanthis team spent six months cataloging every GeoCities site they could find, and their results are now available as a 641.32 GB torrent on Pirate Bay.Web browsers can also access several “mirror sites” without downloading all that data to their hard drive, which Scott says will primarily appeal to “academics, historians, and collectors.” Those sites include Geociti.es, Geocities.ws, and Reocities.com. Even if you’re not an internet academic, you might want to spend a few hours browsing through the millions of sites. Despite their aged appearance, they showcase a bright and hopeful vision of the futureone in which one person’s words could be seen by millions.
Filed Under: Hosting History.
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