Yahoo Pushing The Door On Geocities Closed October 26

One of the things that kept some using Yahoo was the ability to have a free web site hosted by Yahoo under the GeoCities banner.

The closure had been announced in summer (but if I remember correctly, it was before the deal with Microsoft had been struck), yet many hoped against hope that something would change.

It must be that Microsoft doesn’t want GeoCities competing with Live Spaces, or it might be that the Yahoo profit margins aren’t quite high enough for the new CEO – it could be either, or both.

There will be, however, a paid option, for those who wish to remain under the umbrella of Yahoo, but at a cost of $4.99 per month. The rest of the details flow in from TechConnect -

Announced this summer, the shut down of GeoCities, Yahoo’s free website creation service, has been officially set for Monday, October 26. Claiming the need to cut costs, Yahoo has previously stopped accepting new registrations, and is now gearing up to put the final nail in the service’s coffin.

Those who still use GeoCities are advised to either transfer their site to Yahoo! Web Hosting (which costs $4.99 per month) or download their files in order to move to other hosting services. The clock’s ticking…

I’m not sure why anyone would stay with Yahoo when the move to Microsoft will be free. The LiveSpaces sites are quite nice, and the ability of the Windows user to tie in with their mail account, and use Live Writer makes it very nice.

I’m aware that many people are staying with Yahoo for mail, but I can’t understand why.  I checked in to an old Yahoo account I have, and the service, though improved, is still slower than others, doesn’t support Opera, my preferred browser, and has other small restrictions I can’t tolerate. Hotmail is better, and for those who want to remove themselves from the Microsoft-Google-Yahoo circle of influence, there is GMX, which offers the best of all of them. Unless you are using Google Docs, GMX wails on GMail, and has not suffered the outages that service has been having lately.

Sorry I drifted there, but if not going to Microsoft for the website, I’d go with GMX for mail.  (once again, non-compensated and unsolicited endorsement)

So, if you have a site on GeoCities, don’t lose your content, the deadline is October 26.

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Sylvester Yahoo is at the door, don’t let him get your Tweety website!

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