Is Yahoo! Determined to Remain a Web 1.0 Company?

Oct 27, 2009

Yahoo! announced in April that it would shut down its free website service, GeoCities, despite the fact that collectively GeoCites websites get over 10 million unique monthly visitors. This week it made good on the promise.

The decision to shut down GeoCities rather than sell it or do something more creative like partner with another business to keep it going is short-sighted, and, in my opinion, sends the message that Yahoo! is willing to put profit before customer satisfaction. It’s probably driven almost completely by the desire to show a profit in the short term. That would explain why the best alternative Yahoo! can come up with is offering GeoCities users its paid hosting service.

There are many other alternatives like WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress that have – without setting out to do so – essentially replaced services like GeoCities.

Someone with vision and initiative at Yahoo! might have gone to a service like WordPress.com to see how they could partner to provide GeoCities users with – at the very least – a smooth transition to another platform or, even better, an arrangement that would let Yahoo! keep a connection with the thousands of apparently satisfied GeoCities users. Instead, they dump out the baby with the bath water hoping to cut their losses. Maybe they think no one will notice.