Yahoo Inc.  is closing GeoCities, a service that provides web site publishing and hosting service. Yahoo bought this service in May 1999 for about $3 billion in stock during the dot-com boom.

Geocities will cease operating later this year. People who visit the site now see a message which states that new GeoCities accounts will not be available and offers the option to sign up for Yahoo’s Web hosting service paying $5.98 a month.

GeoCities is not the only service that Yahoo is planning to shut; some other Yahoo services that will also be eliminated are Yahoo Briefcase, My Web, Farechase, RSS ads, Yahoo Live, Yahoo Pets, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers. Recently Yahoo also outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS Corp.

“As part of Yahoo’s ongoing effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers and results for advertisers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others,” a statement from Yahoo said.

The process of trimming non profitable services and revamping started in 2007 during Jerry Yang’s time as the chief executive an it has gain momentum under the new CEO Carol Bartz. Recently Yahoo laid off 700 workers.

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