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. (more…)
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