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End of an Era: Geocities Officially Closes Today

by Caleb Johnson on October 26, 2009 at 01:14 PM

For months now, we've known this day was coming. But that doesn't make saying goodbye any easier. Geocities, the granddaddy of homepage-hosting services, is shutting down today. Not only will the service become obsolete, but all its data will be permanently deleted, too.

Geocities has walked a long road, from pioneering Internet self-publishing, to selling out to Yahoo!, to total irrelevance, but according to Computer World, some people think it's worth remembering. Digital archivist (Yes, there's such a title.) Jason Scott and his team have been busier than bees as they back up as much content from Geocities as possible. That is quite the task, considering the service hosts about ten terabytes of data. Scott believes there's historically significant stuff that needs to be saved, whether it's guitar tablature, fan fiction, photographs, or GIF files.


"All stuff that, I think, down the line, will have meaning. It's not for me to judge. It's for me to collect," he says.

We agree that Scott's preservation method is more sound than just throwing money into the bottomless pit that is Geocities. But do enough people really care? There are already some Geocities tributes, but if you ask us, this is history that'd best be swept under the rug. Yes, even the dancing hamsters. [From: Computer World]

Tags: closing, data, geocities, history, homepage, internet, top, web, yahoo

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