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GeoCities

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Established in California in 1995, GeoCities was a leading web hosting service. Initially known as BHI, it started with six themed communities and provided ‘Homesteaders’ or users, 2MB of complimentary space for their personal web pages. GeoCities grew to incorporate diverse ‘neighborhoods’ such as CapitolHill and Tokyo, and by the close of 1995, it proudly showcased 14 neighborhoods with millions of page views every month. In a landmark event in its timeline, Yahoo! purchased GeoCities in 1999 for $3.57 billion in stock. However, alterations in the terms of service among other reasons led to GeoCities’ shutdown in the U.S. in October 2009. Despite its discontinuation, GeoCities left an indelible imprint as it was a pioneer in user-generated content platforms, ranked as the third most visited site during its peak, and hosted a minimum of 38 million pages prior to its shutdown. Presently, GeoCities is commemorated for its crucial role in the internet^[1]’s infancy and the influence it exerted on internet culture.

Terms definitions

1. ↑ internet. The Internet, a global network of interconnected computer systems, utilizes standardized communication protocols, predominantly TCP/IP, to connect devices across the globe. The term 'Internet' has its roots in the 1849 term 'internetted' and was later adopted by the US War Department in 1945. The inception of the Internet can be traced back to the 1960s when computer scientists developed time-sharing systems, which eventually led to the creation of ARPANET in 1969. The Internet operates autonomously, without any central control, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages its primary name spaces. It has revolutionized traditional communication methods and has seen an exponential growth, with the number of internet users growing by 20% to 50% every year. In 2019, more than half of the global population was using the Internet. The Internet protocol suite, comprising TCP/IP and four conceptual layers, directs internet packets to their intended destinations. Fundamental services such as email and Internet telephony function on the Internet. The World Wide Web, an extensive network of interconnected documents, serves as a crucial element of the Internet.

GeoCities (Wikipedia)

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. On January 28, 1999, it was acquired by Yahoo!, at which time it was reportedly the third-most visited website on the World Wide Web.

GeoCities
Logo under Yahoo! from 2009 to 2019
Type of site	Web hosting service
Owner	GeoCities (1994–1999) Yahoo! (1999–2009)
Created by	David Bohnett and John Rezner
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Yes
Launched	November 1994; 29 years ago (1994-11)
Current status	Inactive since 2009 (Japanese version inactive since 2019)

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, the company announced that it would end the United States GeoCities service on October 26, 2009.

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

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