Motherboard

Angelfire and Tripod have received a boost in their bid for net supremacy, as their ancient and storied rival, Geocities, has lain down and died.

We all remember Geocities as the once undisputed king of the web which grew fabulously rich off of our insatiable lust for X-Files fan art, SNES roms, and poorly arranged image galleries of Carmen Electra. It was all incredibly simple: first, you’d make sure no one was on the phone, then you’d fire up the modem and listen to that satisfying scream-crackle, then you’d load up Internet Explorer (Netscape if you’d seen Hackers), and sign up for a free site with some ads discreetly sprinkled along the side. Then the web and all its interactivity was yours for the picking – you could join a webring of similar sites (to circumvent Lycos’ ignorance of you), you could set up a guestbook so people could tell you when they’d visited your site, or you could set up a little ticker to count the legions of fans swarming to hear your Simpsons WAV clips. It was like science fiction come true.

Geocities was then bought for billions in ‘99 by Yahoo, assuring the search giant’s unassailable status as Internet King. Today, having conquered all comers, it retires to internet Valhalla (or possibly the Internet Archive ), where its sites shall never be under construction again. While sad, this is essential for the growth of the web. I mean, with such perfection, there’s no need for growth! The future is once again wide open for Mister_T_79, and before we know it, he’ll be laughing out loud (LOLing) again.