It's the end of an era.
Yahoo announced Thursday that it will shut down GeoCities, the Web site building business it acquired a decade ago.
"We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways," Yahoo said in a statement. "We will be closing GeoCities later this year."
The closure is part of an effort to streamline operations at Yahoo, a plan that chief executive Carol Bartz outlined in more detail during the company's Tuesday earnings call.
"We are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others," according to a spokeswoman. "For example, after careful consideration, we recently discontinued products such as Yahoo Briefcase, Farechase, My Web, Yahoo Audio Search, RSS ads, Yahoo Pets, Yahoo Live, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers, and outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with our consumers and partners in the months ahead."
People with existing Geocities Web sites can still access and add content to their sites, but they will be shut down by the end of the year. "You don't need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible," Yahoo said in a FAQ on the Geocities site. "We'll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time."
The company urged users to upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting service.
Yahoo purchased GeoCities in January 1999 for $5 billion.
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