GeoCities (1995-2009) is finally put out of our misery

GSBot · Oct 26th, 2009, 10:58 AM

We've known for months that early-90's homepage service GeoCities was shutting down today, taking a big chunk of Internet history and a lot of hideous animated GIFs with it. That doesn't stop the web geeks at Download Squad from getting a little sentimental, though.

To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi: we felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

So, let's take a moment to remember GeoCities. The easy website-creation service opened in 1995, and many Internet users set up their first homepages within its quirky "neighborhoods". Back before everyone had a .com, GeoCities sported long, convoluted URLs with directories like SiliconValley/Pines or SunsetStrip/Towers. In 1999, GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo!, and has been a Yahoo! property ever since.

Although GeoCities sites are all disappearing from Yahoo!'s servers today, you can still take a trip down memory lane. Archive.org has started a Special Collection to catalog the sites. The effort was supported by Archive Team and includes a collection of those ever-present "Under Construction" GIFs from the heydey of GeoCities.

Popular geek-centric webcomic XKCD paid its own tribute to GeoCities today, reskinning the site to look like a stereotypical homepage, circa 1996.GeoCities (1995-2009) is finally put out of our misery originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sponsored Topics: GeoCities - Yahoo - Website - Download Squad - Graphics Interchange Format

maroush · Oct 26th, 2009, 06:04 PM

RIP.

confused · Oct 26th, 2009, 08:58 PM

*sighz* thats where i put my second most-used identity.. [ever]

Sheeda Pistol · Oct 26th, 2009, 09:54 PM

Internet and web design has come a long way since 1995. I was using Mosaic as my web browser back then, now I'm on my iPhone posting using safari

So long Geo****ties

Arleitter · Oct 27th, 2009, 12:17 AM

Thanks Geo and Good Bye.

fat spartan · Oct 27th, 2009, 09:35 AM

The first webhost I remember using was Lycos. I tried to register one with geocities back before they were bought out by yahoo. However, that was annoying, finding a neighborhood with an available spot and all. I just backed up two of my old geocities sites. One of them was used to host avatars and the other mostly had screenshots of some games.