Yahoo announced it will close the personal hosting site called GeoCities. The company announced in a statement its decision which will most likely take effect sometime later this year. The firm said it plans to stop accepting new customers and focus instead on aiding existing customers to buld new relationships online. 

 

Yahoo Inc paid about $3 billion for the Web hosting service in 1999, at the height of the dotcom boom. At that time, GeoCities was registering million of active accounts, but it's not longer the same situation. Most users have migrated to social networking Web sites. 

 

The new Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz is making efforts to cut costs in order to keep the company above 'water level' amid tough economic times. Yahoo will also cut 700 jobs this week, which amounts to 5% of the company's workforce. This comes after Yahoo cut off another 1,600 jobs in the fourth quarter. 

 

Yahoo said it will give its GeoCities users information on how to save their data from the hosting Web site later this year. “You don't need to change your service today, but we encourage anyone interested in a full-featured web-hosting plan to consider upgrading to our award-winning Yahoo! Web Hosting service," Yahoo said in an online post. 

 

However, the GeoCities shut down marks the end of an era, that's for sure.