Once an icon of the dot-com era, the GeoCities web hosting service is scheduled to be shut down this year.
Yahoo! purchased GeoCities for $3 billion at the peak of the dot-com boom, yet the site has struggled to turn a profit with traffic falling 25 percent in the last 12 months. The announcement comes as the search engine giants sheds 5 percent of its staff in an effort to cut costs.
Originally known as BHI, or "Beverly Hills Internet", GeoCities was founded in 1994 as a simple way for internet users to create basic home pages. By 1997 it was the fifth most popular site on the web with 1 million users. The site originally attempted to create online communities divided according to geographical areas, a concept that Yahoo! did away with.
GeoCities is no longer accepting new accounts and Yahoo! has issued the following statement on the site; "After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We'll share more details this summer."
