Back in the 90s there was really only one way to build a site for free – that was Geocities. This service, hosted by Yahoo, once boasted millions of users. New hosting technologies and cheap hosting prices have caused Geocities’ popularity to decline over the years.

A few days ago, after 15 years of offering people the ability to set up their own website, Geocities has closed down for good. Yahoo acquired Geocities for 3.57 billion U.S. dollars in 1999 , though the site had been operating since 1994. Yahoo said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October. However, some pages will still be accessible via the  Internet Archive project.

Many technology sites covered the closure of Geocities. Some, like the comics site XKCD, have made different tributes, in honor of the old web service.

Geocities was a good idea at the beginning of the days of the internet, but nowadays, building a website or blog is cheap and easy for anyone to do, without the need for web programming skills. Even more sophisticated websites for e-commerce and business applications for sales and customer management are available at reasonable prices for small business owners.