Yahoo! shuts down GeoCities

San Francisco, Oct 27: Yahoo Inc shut down the popular web hosting service, GeoCities on Monday, Oct 26, and asked its users to the set up new online homes at its paid Web hosting service.

GeoCities has been around for over a decade and half since its birth in 1994. At its peak, the site was the third most visited site on the World Wide Web.

Yahoo had bought the service during the dot com boom for over three billion dollars.

A message posted on the GeoCities website by Yahoo said that the company thoroughly enjoyed hosting websites created by Yahoo! users all over the world.

"However, we have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in other ways," the statement said.

This comes after the Internet major posted a three-fold jump in its Q3 net profit about a week ago which indicated that company had gained from the rigorous cost-cutting initiatives.

OneIndia News