
GeoCities Japan is shutting down - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1408120/yahoo-japan-is-shutting-down-its-website-hosting-service-geocities/
======
LinuxBender
Slightly off-topic, but I saw in another HN thread the other day that someone
created an open source fork of GeoCities. NeoCities [1] and a GitHub repo [2]

I hope it makes a come-back, animated gifs and all.

[1] - [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/)

[2] - [https://github.com/neocities](https://github.com/neocities)

~~~
theandrewbailey
Depends on your definition of "fork". Successor, maybe.

Neocities has been around for at least 5 years:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5918724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5918724)

~~~
LinuxBender
Very good point. I should have said succeeded.

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daveslash
"A decade ago, internet users who grew up with Web 1.0 bid a fond farewell to
[Geocities]" <\-- this is what really hit me. It was a _decade_ ago that
GeoCities shut down? I honestly would have estimated that to be no more than 5
years ago.

~~~
coding123
Funny how perspectives work. I had a small Quake page on Geocities, and I know
for sure I was in my teens, like 18, so like 20 years ago. So to hear it was
ONLY 10 years ago is kinda shocking to me.

~~~
seppin
I would have guessed 20 years as well

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carindistory
Several years ago, Infoseek, one of the most popular - possibly more than
GeoCities - web hosting services in Japan shut down and a huge amount of
valuable content accumulated over decades has been lost forever.

What makes matters worse, unlike when GeoCities in the US shut down, no one
created an archive of the websites hosted on Infoseek before they went
offline. Possibly because they are not interested in preserving cultural
legacy.

So I hope someone reading this news would create an archive of GeoCities
Japan, as I cannot expect the Japanese to do it.

~~~
kristofferR
You should notify ArchiveTeam about it:
[https://archiveteam.org](https://archiveteam.org)

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dumbfounder
How much data is it? Is it really that hard to just keep it available in read-
only? Seems like the ads they could serve would justify its existence.

~~~
criddell
Assuming they have thought of those options, perhaps that tells you how little
value there is there.

~~~
pmlnr
"value"

Today the only measure of "value" is the money it brings. Imagine of museums,
archeology, libraries, archivist would only be thinking along those lines as
well.

Geocities had a lot of value, and, unlike physical bookshelves, it would have
been very simple to keep it going as static, read-only sites. Same applies
here.

Related: [https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-
do-a...](https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a-
librarys-job-f58db4673351)

~~~
criddell
> Imagine of museums, archeology, libraries, archivist would only be thinking
> along those lines as well.

You don't have to imagine. They make these kinds of decisions all the time.

I'm not saying that it would have been difficult or expensive to keep it going
as a static thing. Just that even a tiny cost is apparently too much.

Maybe this announcement will encourage somebody that cares more about the data
than GeoCities Japan to come along and buy it from them with the intention of
preserving it.

~~~
moate
Seriously. Museums/archives throw out things ALL THE TIME because they can't
afford to keep housing them.

~~~
emodendroket
It is true that museums and libraries prune their collections. What's not true
is that they make these determinations from the same profit motive that drives
businesses.

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gourneau
[https://www.cameronsworld.net/](https://www.cameronsworld.net/) is a lovely
tribute to the lost GeoCities pages (warning has sound).

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emodendroket
When I was in Japan Yahoo Search was still the big thing, as alluded to in the
article. It seems like their lack of presence on smartphones might have been
the beginning of the end for them.

~~~
lev99
Yahoo Auction Japan
([https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/](https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/)) is still very
active as well.

~~~
xrd
Maybe eBay saw the writing on the wall there and that's why they bought
qoo10.jp.

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qwerty456127
Fortunately, there is a number of static hosting providers that are better
than the old generation nowadays (e.g. GitHub pages, Netlify, Aerobatic). I
just hope the content archive is not going to be lost.

~~~
icebraining
> I just hope the content archive is not going to be lost.

[https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1046669423413669888](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1046669423413669888)

(and you can (probably) help!)

