Yahoo’s $3.65 Billion Mistake: Yahoo Closes GeoCities
Back in 1999 Yahoo purchased GeoCities for $3.65 billion, but today it has sent out a “final notice” warning GeoCities users that they are pulling the plug on the 26th October.
Yahoo currently is shutting down a lot of services which it seems as though previous CEO’s purchased for no real reason. Current Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz seems to have her head switch on and is focusing on Yahoo’s key business areas:
- Homepage
- Messenger
- Everything “mobile”
- Search
- Media experiences across sports, news, finance, entertainment
“Yahoo’s goal is to be at the center of people’s online lives, and these efforts all support that,” says a source.
What is Yahoo wanting to sell:
- Yahoo Games!
- Yahoo Hot Jobs
- Yahoo Small Business
- Zimbra
- Yahoo Shopping
- Delicious
Here’s the farewell letter:
7 Comments
Where does Flickr fall in this?
Flickr works really well, and should be profitable (otherwise, experimenting with pricing isn’t that hard) so it should be fine.
I’m more concerned by delicious.
You listed ’search’ as something ahoo is focusing on. Why would they focus on search if they gave it away to MSFT for the next decade?
The site will not have brought any profit in the long run. Yahoo will have researched, if they are losing in overall and how much, when they close geocities.
I am sure that step by step other sites, who offer free web hosting, will close and reopen with another name, offering web hosting with xx $ per month, unless they make enough profit with advertisement.