Geocities goes offline

Yahoo has announced that its Geocities service, which provided a platform for many of the earliest websites, will no longer be accessible.

According to the BBC, Geocities was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 for £2.17 billion and at its peak had millions of registered users. It originally allowed users to host their web pages in themed ‘cities’, for example ‘Wall Street’ hosted finance websites, while ‘SIliconValley’ hosted technology sites.

However, after the acquisition the themed nature of the site was abandoned and a number of premium fee-based services introduced.

The closure of the site was announced after Yahoo initiated a policy of shutting down its less profitable services.