GeoCities

GeoCities
Logo of GeoCities when extincted in 2009.
Type of site
Web hosting service
Owner
  • GeoCities (1994–1999)
  • Yahoo! (1999–2009)
Created byDavid Bohnett and John Rezner
CommercialYes
RegistrationYes
LaunchedNovember 1994; 29 years ago (1994-11)
Current statusInactive since 26 October 2009
(Japanese version inactive since 2019)

GeoCities, later Yahoo! GeoCities, was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest, active from 1994 to 2009. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and was named Beverly Hills Internet briefly before being renamed GeoCities.[1] On January 28, 1999, it was acquired by Yahoo!,[2] at which time it was reportedly the third-most visited website on the World Wide Web.[3]

In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to list the hyperlinks to their Web pages. The "cities" were named after real cities or regions according to their content: For example, computer-related sites were placed in "SiliconValley" and those dealing with entertainment were assigned to "Hollywood", hence the name of the site. Soon after its acquisition by Yahoo!, this practice was abandoned in favor of using the Yahoo! member names in the URLs.

In April 2009,[4] the company announced that it would end the United States GeoCities service on October 26, 2009.[5][6][7]

There were at least 38 million pages displayed by GeoCities before it was terminated, most user-written.[8] The GeoCities Japan version of the service endured until March 31, 2019.[9]

  1. ^ McCullough, Brian (May 11, 2015). "DAVID BOHNETT, FOUNDER OF GEOCITIES". Internet History Podcast. Archived from the original (interview podcast) on May 28, 2015.
  2. ^ "Yahoo! To Acquire Geocities" (Press release). Santa Clara, California: Yahoo!. January 28, 1999. Archived from the original on May 2, 2006. Retrieved April 19, 2021.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference MarshallVNU was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference cnn1999 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Fox, Geoff (July 10, 2009). "Yahoo Sets the Date of GeoCities' Death". PCMag.com. Archived from the original on August 31, 2010. Retrieved November 5, 2010.
  6. ^ Rao, Leena (April 23, 2009). "Yahoo Quietly Pulls The Plug On GeoCities". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on June 2, 2009. Retrieved April 30, 2009.
  7. ^ Millian, Mark (October 26, 2009). "GeoCities' time has expired, Yahoo closing the site today". LA Times (blog). Archived from the original on December 21, 2012.
  8. ^ Shechmeister, Matthew (November 3, 2009). "Ghost Pages: A Wired.com Farewell to GeoCities". Wired.com. Archived from the original on January 15, 2012. Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference GeocitiesJ was invoked but never defined (see the help page).