WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.720 I want you to close your eyes for a second. I'm 00:00:01.720 --> 00:00:03.000 driving, of course, please don't close your eyes. 00:00:03.100 --> 00:00:06.120 But mentally, I want you to transport yourself 00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:10.000 back. Okay. We're going to November 1994. The 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:13.779 world is just, it's a drastically different place. 00:00:13.839 --> 00:00:16.079 Oh, completely. You know, Friends has just premiered 00:00:16.079 --> 00:00:19.219 on TV. The Sony PlayStation, it just launched 00:00:19.219 --> 00:00:22.039 in Japan. Yep. And the internet. The internet 00:00:22.039 --> 00:00:26.239 is this quiet, text -heavy, mostly gray place. 00:00:26.359 --> 00:00:28.339 I mean, there's no Google to organize it. There's 00:00:28.339 --> 00:00:30.640 no Facebook to connect everybody. Not at all. 00:00:30.699 --> 00:00:33.159 Amazon is, what, a rumor about some guy selling 00:00:33.159 --> 00:00:35.539 books out of his garage? Exactly. It's barely 00:00:35.539 --> 00:00:40.000 a thing. It really was the Wild West. Or maybe 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:42.560 a better way to put it is it was like a library 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:44.439 where all the books were just thrown on the floor 00:00:44.439 --> 00:00:47.439 in one giant pile. It was raw. It was silent. 00:00:47.539 --> 00:00:49.920 And it was largely academic. That's a perfect 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:52.479 analogy for it. In Southern California, specifically 00:00:52.479 --> 00:00:55.979 in the 90210 zip code, you have two guys, David 00:00:55.979 --> 00:00:58.380 Bonnet and John Reznor, and they're sitting in 00:00:58.380 --> 00:01:02.609 an office at 9401 Wilshire Boulevard. And they 00:01:02.609 --> 00:01:06.189 are about to launch something that for a very 00:01:06.189 --> 00:01:10.049 brief, you know, shining moment becomes the absolute 00:01:10.049 --> 00:01:12.670 center of the online universe. And they call 00:01:12.670 --> 00:01:15.090 it Beverly Hills Internet. Beverly Hills Internet. 00:01:15.250 --> 00:01:17.450 Which, of course, later becomes the behemoth 00:01:17.450 --> 00:01:19.629 that we all know as GeoCities. And frankly, this 00:01:19.629 --> 00:01:21.849 is the moment. This is the point where the Internet 00:01:21.849 --> 00:01:24.890 stops being just a utility for scientists and 00:01:24.890 --> 00:01:27.569 the military. Right. And it becomes a place where 00:01:27.569 --> 00:01:31.090 human beings. actually lived. Lived is the perfect 00:01:31.090 --> 00:01:33.650 word there. We're doing a deep dive today into 00:01:33.650 --> 00:01:36.750 the rise and, well, the eventual fall of geocities. 00:01:36.870 --> 00:01:39.829 And look, if you were online in the late 90s, 00:01:39.829 --> 00:01:42.409 just hearing that name, it probably triggers 00:01:42.409 --> 00:01:45.010 a very specific sensory memory. Oh, absolutely. 00:01:45.150 --> 00:01:46.930 The under construction gifts with the little 00:01:46.930 --> 00:01:49.230 digging man. The blinking text. Yeah. The MIDI 00:01:49.230 --> 00:01:51.109 music that you couldn't turn off no matter what 00:01:51.109 --> 00:01:54.019 you did. Chaotic aesthetic is what we remember, 00:01:54.219 --> 00:01:56.659 for sure. But the story underneath all of that 00:01:56.659 --> 00:01:58.659 is, I mean, it's fascinatingly complex. We are 00:01:58.659 --> 00:02:00.900 talking about the invention of the online community. 00:02:00.900 --> 00:02:03.239 We really are. We are talking about a business 00:02:03.239 --> 00:02:07.700 that was acquired for $3 .57 billion. That's 00:02:07.700 --> 00:02:10.500 with a B, despite having, what, almost zero revenue? 00:02:10.780 --> 00:02:13.180 I still can't get past that number. $3 .5 billion. 00:02:13.639 --> 00:02:16.500 It's staggering. For a site that was famous for 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:19.620 being free and, let's be honest, arguably pretty 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:22.530 ugly. Agrees. And we're also talking about a 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:25.129 tragic ending. It involves privacy scandals, 00:02:25.129 --> 00:02:29.849 corporate mismanagement, and this frantic race 00:02:29.849 --> 00:02:32.409 by digital archaeologists to save history before 00:02:32.409 --> 00:02:34.370 it was deleted forever. That three and a half 00:02:34.370 --> 00:02:36.750 billion, though. It's the headline number, always. 00:02:37.370 --> 00:02:40.169 But to understand that valuation and to understand 00:02:40.169 --> 00:02:42.030 the tragedy of its collapse, you have to understand 00:02:42.030 --> 00:02:44.509 what GeoCities actually was. Because it wasn't 00:02:44.509 --> 00:02:47.189 just web hosting. No. It was a psychological 00:02:47.189 --> 00:02:50.150 experiment in digital geography. So let's unpack 00:02:50.150 --> 00:02:54.159 this. right at the beginning. Late 1994, Bunnett 00:02:54.159 --> 00:02:57.800 and Reznor start Beverly Hills Internet, or BHI. 00:02:57.919 --> 00:03:00.419 It's such a 90s name for a tech company, isn't 00:03:00.419 --> 00:03:03.580 it? It's incredibly 90s. It sounds like a cable 00:03:03.580 --> 00:03:06.280 provider for rich people or something. But their 00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:09.580 location, Wilshire Boulevard, that's interesting 00:03:09.580 --> 00:03:11.840 because they were physically in this high -rent 00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:14.180 district. Right. But they were building what 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:17.199 was effectively a digital slum. I mean, a free 00:03:17.199 --> 00:03:19.900 space. for absolutely everyone well you know 00:03:19.900 --> 00:03:23.530 initially the concept was just web hosting But 00:03:23.530 --> 00:03:25.430 they ran into the fundamental problem of the 00:03:25.430 --> 00:03:28.210 early web, which was discoverability. How do 00:03:28.210 --> 00:03:31.229 you find anything? Exactly. In 1994, there were 00:03:31.229 --> 00:03:33.129 no search algorithms. You couldn't just type 00:03:33.129 --> 00:03:36.409 cat photos or Star Trek fan fiction into a search 00:03:36.409 --> 00:03:39.449 bar and get a million results ranked by relevance. 00:03:39.650 --> 00:03:41.830 It didn't exist. If you put a page up, it was 00:03:41.830 --> 00:03:43.689 like throwing a message in a bottle into the 00:03:43.689 --> 00:03:46.509 ocean. No one would find it unless you gave them 00:03:46.509 --> 00:03:49.050 the exact specific coordinates. So they needed 00:03:49.050 --> 00:03:52.280 a map. Right. They needed a taxonomy, a way to 00:03:52.280 --> 00:03:54.439 organize information that humans could intuitively 00:03:54.439 --> 00:03:57.840 understand without needing a computer science 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:01.120 degree. So they looked at the real world. And 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:03.939 what did they see? They said, how do we organize 00:04:03.939 --> 00:04:07.120 people offline? And the answer is we organize 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:10.039 them into cities and neighborhoods based on shared 00:04:10.039 --> 00:04:12.620 interests or demographics. And this is the hook. 00:04:12.659 --> 00:04:15.419 This is the thing that I think. defines Web 1 00:04:15.419 --> 00:04:18.860 .0, the neighborhood metaphor. It changed everything. 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:21.319 They decided that users wouldn't just be users. 00:04:21.420 --> 00:04:23.839 No, they would be homesteaders. I love that term. 00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:26.079 And you didn't just upload a file. You moved 00:04:26.079 --> 00:04:28.560 into a neighborhood. You were staking a claim. 00:04:28.800 --> 00:04:31.379 It makes the abstract internet feel favical. 00:04:32.829 --> 00:04:35.449 So walk us through the map. If I'm a tech nerd 00:04:35.449 --> 00:04:38.110 in 1995, where do I live? You move to Silicon 00:04:38.110 --> 00:04:41.110 Valley. That was the neighborhood for computer 00:04:41.110 --> 00:04:43.930 hardware, programming, tech talk, all that stuff. 00:04:44.149 --> 00:04:45.750 Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. And what if I'm 00:04:45.750 --> 00:04:48.670 obsessed with movies? Or say I want to make a 00:04:48.670 --> 00:04:50.689 fan page for the X -Files. Then you go to Hollywood. 00:04:50.730 --> 00:04:52.829 That was the spot for entertainment. Simple enough. 00:04:52.889 --> 00:04:54.550 What about the other original ones? The source 00:04:54.550 --> 00:04:56.790 material says there were six distinct neighborhoods 00:04:56.790 --> 00:04:59.509 right at the start. You had Wall Street, which 00:04:59.509 --> 00:05:02.569 was for finance, investing, business talk. Right. 00:05:02.829 --> 00:05:06.389 Coliseum for sports. Sunset Strip for music and 00:05:06.389 --> 00:05:08.689 nightlife. Okay. And then you had Rodeo Drive. 00:05:08.910 --> 00:05:11.050 Which I'm guessing, keeping with that Beverly 00:05:11.050 --> 00:05:13.350 Hills theme, had to be for shopping. Shopping, 00:05:13.350 --> 00:05:16.410 fashion, and, you know, general lifestyle stuff. 00:05:16.709 --> 00:05:19.050 Yeah. But here's the genius part. It wasn't just 00:05:19.050 --> 00:05:21.350 a category tag. It wasn't like a hashtag. It 00:05:21.350 --> 00:05:24.269 was a literal address. Right. When you signed 00:05:24.269 --> 00:05:27.990 up, you didn't get geocities .com, Steve. You 00:05:27.990 --> 00:05:30.769 got geocities .com, Ford for sale, Imelken Valley, 00:05:30.949 --> 00:05:34.430 7201. You had a house number. On a street. You 00:05:34.430 --> 00:05:36.649 had a house number. And because they were sequential, 00:05:36.970 --> 00:05:39.610 the low numbers became status symbols. I bet 00:05:39.610 --> 00:05:42.990 they did. If you were at Hollywood 1005. You 00:05:42.990 --> 00:05:45.310 were an early settler. You were one of the founding 00:05:45.310 --> 00:05:47.709 fathers of that digital block. And if you were 00:05:47.709 --> 00:05:50.069 at Hollywood 9000. You were living way out in 00:05:50.069 --> 00:05:51.949 the suburbs. You were a newcomer. That is just 00:05:51.949 --> 00:05:54.550 fascinating. It immediately creates a social 00:05:54.550 --> 00:05:57.230 hierarchy and a sense of scarcity in a medium 00:05:57.230 --> 00:05:59.649 of digital space that is theoretically infinite. 00:05:59.790 --> 00:06:02.230 Exactly right. It tapped into our, you know, 00:06:02.230 --> 00:06:05.709 our primate desire for status and location. And 00:06:05.709 --> 00:06:07.990 it solved the navigation problem. Well, if I 00:06:07.990 --> 00:06:09.850 wanted to find other people who liked what I 00:06:09.850 --> 00:06:11.550 liked, I didn't need a search engine. I just 00:06:11.550 --> 00:06:13.000 walked around. around the Hollywood neighborhood, 00:06:13.300 --> 00:06:15.600 I could literally click a next button and see 00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:17.759 who lived next door to me. It's serendipitous 00:06:17.759 --> 00:06:19.699 discovery. You're just stumbling upon things 00:06:19.699 --> 00:06:22.560 you're exploring. And that fueled massive growth. 00:06:22.839 --> 00:06:26.439 In July of 1995, they expanded. They added Capitol 00:06:26.439 --> 00:06:29.459 Hill for politics. Of course. Paris for romance 00:06:29.459 --> 00:06:32.319 and poetry. Tokyo for anime and Asian culture. 00:06:32.519 --> 00:06:36.920 And by December 1995, BHI officially rebranded 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:39.459 as GeoCities. And the numbers by this point were 00:06:39.459 --> 00:06:41.439 just exploding. Oh, yeah. Thousands. Thousands 00:06:41.439 --> 00:06:43.519 of homesteaders were registering every single 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:46.199 day. By the end of 95, they were getting 6 million 00:06:46.199 --> 00:06:49.139 monthly page views. Which we have to stop and 00:06:49.139 --> 00:06:52.720 remind everyone, in 1995, that is an astronomical 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:56.279 number. The web was tiny. 6 million views is 00:06:56.279 --> 00:06:58.259 like having Super Bowl numbers today relative 00:06:58.259 --> 00:07:00.180 to the size of the audience. And you have to 00:07:00.180 --> 00:07:01.759 remember the constraints they were working with. 00:07:01.899 --> 00:07:05.759 In mid -1995, GeoCities offered you 2 megabytes 00:07:05.759 --> 00:07:09.180 of storage space. 2 megabytes. I want to pause 00:07:09.180 --> 00:07:11.009 on that because I think for a mom... Modern listener, 00:07:11.149 --> 00:07:13.449 that number might not even register. It's so 00:07:13.449 --> 00:07:16.310 small. It's nothing. My phone takes a photo of 00:07:16.310 --> 00:07:20.029 my lunch and it's 5 megabytes. Right. But in 00:07:20.029 --> 00:07:24.689 1995, you were on a dial -up modem. A 56K modem, 00:07:24.689 --> 00:07:27.990 if you were lucky. Maybe even a 14 .4K. That 00:07:27.990 --> 00:07:31.339 horrible screeching sound. Exactly. downloading 00:07:31.339 --> 00:07:34.240 a high -res photo would take 10 minutes. So the 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:37.399 web was built on text and tiny, tiny graphics. 00:07:38.079 --> 00:07:40.319 Two megabytes was actually a sprawling estate 00:07:40.319 --> 00:07:42.879 if you were just writing HTML and using low -res 00:07:42.879 --> 00:07:45.360 clip art. It was enough room to build a mansion, 00:07:45.480 --> 00:07:48.120 text -wise. Absolutely. So people built their 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:50.680 mansions. They added guest books for people to 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:52.439 sign. They added those little hit counters at 00:07:52.439 --> 00:07:54.420 the bottom. Oh, the hit counters? You are the 00:07:54.420 --> 00:07:57.060 45th person to visit my site. Yeah. It was all 00:07:57.060 --> 00:07:59.740 about validating your existence online. I am 00:07:59.740 --> 00:08:02.199 here. I built this. People saw it. It really 00:08:02.199 --> 00:08:04.439 was the precursor to social media, wasn't it? 00:08:04.519 --> 00:08:07.019 But with a crucial difference. It wasn't a feed. 00:08:07.220 --> 00:08:09.620 You weren't just shouting into a stream. You 00:08:09.620 --> 00:08:11.860 were tending a garden. You were building a home 00:08:11.860 --> 00:08:14.139 that people had to actually come and visit. That's 00:08:14.139 --> 00:08:15.879 a beautiful way to put it. It was pull media, 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:19.399 not push media. But, you know, as with all utopian 00:08:19.399 --> 00:08:22.079 projects on the web, reality eventually comes 00:08:22.079 --> 00:08:25.019 knocking. And reality usually looks like a venture 00:08:25.019 --> 00:08:27.160 capitalist asking, so how do we make money from 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:29.899 this? Pretty much. Which brings us to the growing 00:08:29.899 --> 00:08:34.600 pains. We're in 1996, 1997 now. The company has 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:36.799 moved its headquarters to Santa Monica. They're 00:08:36.799 --> 00:08:40.639 growing up. But they are burning cash. Web hosting 00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:43.419 is expensive. It's very expensive, even if it's 00:08:43.419 --> 00:08:46.259 just 2 MB per user. When you have millions of 00:08:46.259 --> 00:08:49.159 users and millions of hits, bandwidth costs money. 00:08:49.379 --> 00:08:53.200 Servers cost money. So in May 1997... They did 00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:55.299 the inevitable. They introduced ads. And I'm 00:08:55.299 --> 00:08:57.139 sure the homesteaders took this with grace and 00:08:57.139 --> 00:08:58.980 understanding. A brief laugh. Absolutely not. 00:08:59.080 --> 00:09:01.080 No. Yeah. They viewed it as a complete invasion 00:09:01.080 --> 00:09:03.399 of their space. But the ads were just the start. 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:07.240 The real war. And I mean, to the users, it felt 00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:10.279 like a war started in June 1998. The watermark 00:09:10.279 --> 00:09:12.679 controversy. The watermark controversy. I read 00:09:12.679 --> 00:09:14.600 about this and it sounds incredibly intrusive. 00:09:14.720 --> 00:09:16.740 Can you explain what the watermark actually was 00:09:16.740 --> 00:09:19.519 from a technical perspective? So GeoCities wanted 00:09:19.519 --> 00:09:21.419 to brand the content. They wanted everyone to 00:09:21.419 --> 00:09:24.730 know this. is a GeoCities site. So they developed 00:09:24.730 --> 00:09:27.049 a transparent GIF logo, but they didn't just 00:09:27.049 --> 00:09:29.669 put it at the top of the page. No, no. They used 00:09:29.669 --> 00:09:33.149 JavaScript overlay. Oh, no. And this overlay 00:09:33.149 --> 00:09:36.389 made the logo float in the bottom right corner 00:09:36.389 --> 00:09:38.730 of the browser window. Like a network bug on 00:09:38.730 --> 00:09:41.169 a TV show. The little CNN logo or something. 00:09:41.409 --> 00:09:43.529 Exactly like that. But here's the technical problem. 00:09:43.669 --> 00:09:47.149 This is 1998. Browsers like Netscape Navigator 00:09:47.149 --> 00:09:52.919 and Internet Explorer 4 were, let's say, temperamental 00:09:52.919 --> 00:09:55.899 a polite word for it and web design was done 00:09:55.899 --> 00:09:58.440 using html tables you know you'd nest a table 00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:00.379 inside a table inside another table just to get 00:10:00.379 --> 00:10:02.179 the layout right it was house of cards a very 00:10:02.179 --> 00:10:05.440 fragile house of cards and then geocities injects 00:10:05.440 --> 00:10:08.000 this dynamic javascript element that's constantly 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:10.419 trying to calculate the screen position it was 00:10:10.419 --> 00:10:13.200 heavy it slowed down the scrolling it broke things 00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:16.429 and Often, it would completely break the rendering 00:10:16.429 --> 00:10:18.870 of the underlying page. It would cover up navigation 00:10:18.870 --> 00:10:21.789 buttons. It would make text unreadable. So it's 00:10:21.789 --> 00:10:23.750 not just that they put a logo on your work. They 00:10:23.750 --> 00:10:26.509 essentially graffitied your house, and in the 00:10:26.509 --> 00:10:29.019 process, they broke the front door lock. That 00:10:29.019 --> 00:10:32.019 is exactly how the users felt. It was a violation 00:10:32.019 --> 00:10:34.820 of their sovereign space. They had spent hours, 00:10:34.860 --> 00:10:37.899 days, hand -coding these pages, and the landlord 00:10:37.899 --> 00:10:40.299 just came in and slapped a neon sign on the window. 00:10:40.519 --> 00:10:43.320 The revolt must have been massive. It was. People 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:45.460 threatened to leave in droves. They organized 00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:49.000 boycotts. It was a huge mess. And how did corporate 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.179 respond to this? Did they say, sorry, we messed 00:10:51.179 --> 00:10:53.320 up, we'll take it down? This is the part that 00:10:53.320 --> 00:10:56.929 just makes you cynical about corporate PR. GeoCities 00:10:56.929 --> 00:11:00.360 issued a press release. And in it, they claim 00:11:00.360 --> 00:11:02.500 that the feedback regarding the watermark had 00:11:02.500 --> 00:11:05.240 been overwhelmingly positive. Get out of here. 00:11:05.559 --> 00:11:07.179 Overwhelmingly positive. That is straight up 00:11:07.179 --> 00:11:09.679 gaslighting your entire user base. It just highlights 00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:12.440 this massive disconnect. The executives in Santa 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:14.399 Monica were looking at spreadsheets with brand 00:11:14.399 --> 00:11:16.899 impressions. The users in Silicon Valley were 00:11:16.899 --> 00:11:19.440 looking at broken code and a ruined homepage. 00:11:20.100 --> 00:11:23.159 Unbelievable. But paradoxically, the growth didn't 00:11:23.159 --> 00:11:25.539 actually stop, did it? The momentum was just 00:11:25.539 --> 00:11:29.340 too strong. It was. On October 2, 1997, they 00:11:29.340 --> 00:11:33.200 hit one million registered users. One million 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:36.399 homesteaders. In 1997 numbers, that's basically 00:11:36.399 --> 00:11:38.980 a nation state. It really is. And Wall Street, 00:11:39.159 --> 00:11:41.519 well, they smelled blood in the water. In August 00:11:41.519 --> 00:11:44.320 1998, GeoCities goes public. The ticker symbol 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:48.460 is G -C -T -Y. They price the IPO at $17 a share. 00:11:48.830 --> 00:11:51.070 And this is the absolute peak of the dot -com 00:11:51.070 --> 00:11:52.929 mania. Oh, it went vertical. I mean, the price 00:11:52.929 --> 00:11:55.750 just skyrocketed. It went to over $100 per share 00:11:55.750 --> 00:11:59.789 almost immediately. By 1999, GeoCities was the 00:11:59.789 --> 00:12:02.669 third most visited site on the entire web. The 00:12:02.669 --> 00:12:05.169 third. Who was beating them? Only AOL and Yahoo. 00:12:05.350 --> 00:12:07.210 That's it. Wow. They were bigger than Amazon 00:12:07.210 --> 00:12:09.049 at that point. They were bigger than Microsoft's 00:12:09.049 --> 00:12:11.409 MSN. They were absolute titans. So you have this 00:12:11.409 --> 00:12:13.909 company with millions of users, a stock price 00:12:13.909 --> 00:12:16.470 that is completely defying gravity, and a user 00:12:16.470 --> 00:12:18.740 base that is somehow simultaneously. addicted 00:12:18.740 --> 00:12:20.879 to the service and furious at the management. 00:12:21.039 --> 00:12:23.980 It's a powder keg. It is. And then the match 00:12:23.980 --> 00:12:26.840 gets lit. Which brings us to segment three, the 00:12:26.840 --> 00:12:31.580 acquisition. January 1999. The absolute zenith 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:35.080 of the dot -com bubble, Yahoo. What you have 00:12:35.080 --> 00:12:37.200 to remember was the Google of its day. It was 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:39.360 the kingmaker. They were everything. They were 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:41.980 everything. And they decided they need to own 00:12:41.980 --> 00:12:44.100 this community. They announced they are buying 00:12:44.100 --> 00:12:48.779 GeoCities for $3 .7 billion in stock. I really 00:12:48.779 --> 00:12:50.700 need to stop and just dwell on this number. $3 00:12:50.700 --> 00:12:56.620 .57 billion. And you mentioned earlier they weren't 00:12:56.620 --> 00:12:58.480 profitable. Not profitable is putting it mildly. 00:12:58.519 --> 00:13:00.700 In the fourth quarter of 1998, right before the 00:13:00.700 --> 00:13:04.600 sale, GeoCities posted an $8 million loss. So 00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:08.539 Yahoo. paid nearly $4 billion for a company that 00:13:08.539 --> 00:13:10.700 was actively losing money. They weren't buying 00:13:10.700 --> 00:13:12.779 revenue, they were buying eyeballs. That was 00:13:12.779 --> 00:13:15.200 the metric of the 90s. The whole theory was, 00:13:15.320 --> 00:13:17.399 get the traffic now, figure out how to monetize 00:13:17.399 --> 00:13:19.600 it later. Yahoo thought, if we own the community, 00:13:19.860 --> 00:13:22.100 we own the web. But there's a huge difference 00:13:22.100 --> 00:13:23.919 between buying a billboard and buying a community. 00:13:24.179 --> 00:13:26.500 And it seems like Yahoo just did not understand 00:13:26.500 --> 00:13:28.580 that distinction. They fundamentally misunderstood 00:13:28.580 --> 00:13:31.240 the culture. And the friction started literally 00:13:31.240 --> 00:13:33.889 the moment the deal closed. When the acquisition 00:13:33.889 --> 00:13:38.230 was finalized in May 1999, Yahoo updated the 00:13:38.230 --> 00:13:41.889 terms of service. The dreaded TOS update. Never 00:13:41.889 --> 00:13:44.570 good news. But this wasn't just some minor legalese 00:13:44.570 --> 00:13:47.850 change. The new term stated that Yahoo owned 00:13:47.850 --> 00:13:50.570 all rights and content to anything posted on 00:13:50.570 --> 00:13:53.399 GeoCities. Wait, what? Your text, your artwork, 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:55.840 your personal photos, everything. So you're telling 00:13:55.840 --> 00:13:58.820 me if I'm a mom in 1999 and I post a photo of 00:13:58.820 --> 00:14:01.440 my newborn baby on my Heartland GeoCities page 00:14:01.440 --> 00:14:05.299 to show my grandmother, Yahoo now owns that photo? 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:07.600 According to the text of the agreement they put 00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:10.320 out, yes. They claim the right to reproduce it, 00:14:10.360 --> 00:14:12.500 to modify it, to distribute it however they want 00:14:12.500 --> 00:14:15.379 it. That's dystopian. It was a complete disaster. 00:14:15.620 --> 00:14:18.600 The users who were already, you know, on edge 00:14:18.600 --> 00:14:20.860 from the watermark incident, they went nuclear. 00:14:21.039 --> 00:14:23.120 I can't even imagine. The homesteaders saw themselves 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:25.419 as property owners. And now the new landlord 00:14:25.419 --> 00:14:27.340 was coming in and claiming he owned all the furniture 00:14:27.340 --> 00:14:31.159 inside the house, too. Wow. Yahoo was forced 00:14:31.159 --> 00:14:33.580 to reverse the decision very, very quickly because 00:14:33.580 --> 00:14:36.529 of the backlash. But the trust, the trust was 00:14:36.529 --> 00:14:39.909 just vaporized, gone. And then in July 1999, 00:14:40.210 --> 00:14:42.110 they made the change that I think really drove 00:14:42.110 --> 00:14:44.049 the final nail into the coffin of the culture. 00:14:44.230 --> 00:14:46.710 The big one. They killed the neighborhoods. This 00:14:46.710 --> 00:14:49.990 was the real tragedy. Yahoo looked at the Silicon 00:14:49.990 --> 00:14:52.590 Valley 1334 address system and thought, this 00:14:52.590 --> 00:14:54.769 is too complicated. It's hard to remember. Right. 00:14:54.889 --> 00:14:59.470 So they switched to vanity URLs, geocities .com 00:14:59.470 --> 00:15:02.210 member name. Now on paper, that sounds better. 00:15:02.269 --> 00:15:04.720 It's personalized. Why was that a bad thing? 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.159 Because it destroyed the taxonomy. It destroyed 00:15:07.159 --> 00:15:09.120 the sense of place. When you were in Hollywood, 00:15:09.299 --> 00:15:11.059 you were part of a tribe. You had neighbors. 00:15:11.299 --> 00:15:13.320 You had an identity. You had an identity. When 00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:15.679 you became just geocities .com forward slash 00:15:15.679 --> 00:15:18.720 Jason, you were an island. You were just floating 00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:21.899 in a void. It shifted the entire model from community 00:15:21.899 --> 00:15:24.840 centric to user centric. It turned a city into 00:15:24.840 --> 00:15:28.080 a storage locker. Precisely. And without the 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:30.279 neighborhood structure, discoverability just 00:15:30.279 --> 00:15:32.659 tanked. You couldn't just browse the neighborhood 00:15:32.659 --> 00:15:34.820 anymore because the neighborhood affected. didn't 00:15:34.820 --> 00:15:38.080 exist. You had to rely on Yahoo's directory or 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:40.700 its search function, which just wasn't the same 00:15:40.700 --> 00:15:43.279 experience. And then, as the bubble was bursting 00:15:43.279 --> 00:15:47.299 in 2000 and 2001, Yahoo. Started tightening the 00:15:47.299 --> 00:15:49.440 screws on the technical side, too. Right. The 00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:52.700 party was over. Tech stocks were crashing. Yahoo 00:15:52.700 --> 00:15:55.919 needed to make GeoCities profitable now. So they 00:15:55.919 --> 00:15:58.480 introduced premium hosting and they started to 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:01.139 throttle the free accounts. Explain the throttling. 00:16:01.240 --> 00:16:02.940 I've heard horror stories about this from back 00:16:02.940 --> 00:16:05.299 of the day. OK, so they set a data transfer limit. 00:16:05.500 --> 00:16:07.899 Officially, it was something like three gigabytes 00:16:07.899 --> 00:16:10.399 a month, which sounds OK. Yeah, that doesn't 00:16:10.399 --> 00:16:12.159 sound too bad. But the way they enforced it was 00:16:12.159 --> 00:16:14.559 draconian. It was actually calculated on an hourly 00:16:14.559 --> 00:16:17.620 basis, something like. 4 .2 megabytes per hour 00:16:17.620 --> 00:16:21.220 wait 4 .2 megabytes per hour yes so if i have 00:16:21.220 --> 00:16:24.139 a popular fan page with say five photos on it 00:16:24.139 --> 00:16:27.340 and just 10 people visit it in five minutes boom 00:16:27.340 --> 00:16:31.620 your site goes dark the next visitor gets a service 00:16:31.620 --> 00:16:35.120 temporarily unavailable message and your site 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:37.820 stays down for the rest of that hour That is 00:16:37.820 --> 00:16:40.720 literally punishing success. It's the worst possible 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:43.340 model for a web host. Congratulations on becoming 00:16:43.340 --> 00:16:46.860 popular. We will now shut you off. Wow. It made 00:16:46.860 --> 00:16:49.360 it impossible to run a viral site or a popular 00:16:49.360 --> 00:16:52.440 community on GeoCities. It drove the best creators, 00:16:52.539 --> 00:16:54.320 the people who are actually bringing in the traffic 00:16:54.320 --> 00:16:57.340 away to other hosts or to paid services. Oh, 00:16:57.360 --> 00:16:59.519 what's left? It left behind only the abandoned 00:16:59.519 --> 00:17:02.340 pages and the very small personal sites that 00:17:02.340 --> 00:17:04.500 got almost no traffic. It essentially created 00:17:04.500 --> 00:17:07.680 a ghost town. A ghost town. While the site was 00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:10.180 slowly dying on the outside, there was something 00:17:10.180 --> 00:17:12.180 else happening in the background, something legal. 00:17:12.359 --> 00:17:14.460 And this brings us to segment four, the dark 00:17:14.460 --> 00:17:17.339 side. Because while GeoCities was painting itself 00:17:17.339 --> 00:17:20.000 as this friendly, quirky community, they were 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:22.099 doing something with user data that got them 00:17:22.099 --> 00:17:25.200 in serious trouble. Yes. This is a critical chapter 00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:27.339 that often gets glossed over in all the nostalgia. 00:17:28.070 --> 00:17:31.890 In 1999, the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, 00:17:32.109 --> 00:17:34.970 filed a complaint against GeoCities. And this 00:17:34.970 --> 00:17:37.670 was a landmark case. It was arguably the first 00:17:37.670 --> 00:17:40.809 major internet privacy case. And what was the 00:17:40.809 --> 00:17:43.309 specific charge? Deceptive acts and practices. 00:17:43.690 --> 00:17:46.630 Deceptive how? It comes down to the promise versus 00:17:46.630 --> 00:17:49.369 the reality. When you signed up for GeoCities, 00:17:49.490 --> 00:17:51.609 the new member application asked for a lot of 00:17:51.609 --> 00:17:54.650 personal info. Your income, your education level, 00:17:54.890 --> 00:17:57.880 marital status, occupation. A lot of data. A 00:17:57.880 --> 00:18:00.579 lot. But they had a privacy policy that explicitly 00:18:00.579 --> 00:18:03.279 stated, and I'm paraphrasing, we will not share 00:18:03.279 --> 00:18:05.319 this information with anyone without your permission. 00:18:05.460 --> 00:18:08.140 A very clear promise. Your secrets are safe with 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:12.119 us. Crystal clear. And then they sold it. They 00:18:12.119 --> 00:18:14.960 sold the data. To who? To third party advertisers. 00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:17.740 They created this whole database called the GeoCities 00:18:17.740 --> 00:18:20.119 Marketing Network. They sold lists. Here are 00:18:20.119 --> 00:18:21.759 all the women in the Hollywood neighborhood who 00:18:21.759 --> 00:18:25.319 make over $50 ,000 a year. They allowed advertisers 00:18:25.319 --> 00:18:27.849 to target. banner ads based on all that private 00:18:27.849 --> 00:18:30.349 data you provided so the users were the product 00:18:30.349 --> 00:18:33.970 even back then explicitly and it gets darker 00:18:33.970 --> 00:18:36.750 geocities was as you can imagine very popular 00:18:36.750 --> 00:18:39.970 with children it was a playground for kids learning 00:18:39.970 --> 00:18:42.950 html for the first time i was one of them I made 00:18:42.950 --> 00:18:45.589 my first terrible website on GeoCities when I 00:18:45.589 --> 00:18:48.230 was about 12 years old. Exactly. And the FTC 00:18:48.230 --> 00:18:50.789 found that GeoCities was knowingly collecting 00:18:50.789 --> 00:18:53.990 personal information from children, names, email 00:18:53.990 --> 00:18:56.930 addresses, their interests, even when they knew 00:18:56.930 --> 00:18:59.190 they didn't have parental permission. This sounds 00:18:59.190 --> 00:19:03.390 exactly like the privacy battles we're fighting 00:19:03.390 --> 00:19:06.849 today with TikTok and Meta and everyone else. 00:19:06.869 --> 00:19:09.480 It is the same battle. GeoCities was the canary 00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:11.779 in the coal mine. The FTC settlement required 00:19:11.779 --> 00:19:14.599 them to post a clear privacy notice and get parental 00:19:14.599 --> 00:19:17.119 consent for kids' data, but the damage was done. 00:19:17.259 --> 00:19:19.619 It proved that the business model of Web 1 .0 00:19:19.619 --> 00:19:22.240 wasn't just about hosting. It was about data 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:24.880 extraction. It's pretty sobering to realize that 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:27.880 the so -called innocent days of the web weren't 00:19:27.880 --> 00:19:30.220 actually that innocent at all. No. The surveillance 00:19:30.220 --> 00:19:32.279 capitalism model was there from the start. It 00:19:32.279 --> 00:19:34.640 just wasn't as sophisticated as it is now. So, 00:19:34.740 --> 00:19:37.460 okay, let's recap. We have the loss of community 00:19:37.460 --> 00:19:38.980 identity when they killed the neighborhoods. 00:19:39.240 --> 00:19:41.220 Yeah. We have the loss of utility because of 00:19:41.220 --> 00:19:43.119 the throttling. And we have the loss of trust 00:19:43.119 --> 00:19:45.599 from the privacy scandal. The decline from here 00:19:45.599 --> 00:19:49.759 feels, well, it feels inevitable. It was. Which 00:19:49.759 --> 00:19:52.210 brings us to the end, segment five. The end of 00:19:52.210 --> 00:19:55.630 an era. It was a long, slow decline. For 10 years, 00:19:55.750 --> 00:20:00.769 from 1999 all the way to 2009 Yahoo, just let 00:20:00.769 --> 00:20:03.589 GeoCities rot. They didn't innovate. They didn't 00:20:03.589 --> 00:20:06.089 fix the bugs. It became a punchline. It really 00:20:06.089 --> 00:20:08.230 did. Oh, you still have a GeoCities page, became 00:20:08.230 --> 00:20:09.970 an insult. It was like living in a condemned 00:20:09.970 --> 00:20:12.049 building. with flickering lights and peeling 00:20:12.049 --> 00:20:15.190 paint. And then, in April 2009, the landlord 00:20:15.190 --> 00:20:18.549 finally served the eviction notice. Yahoo announced 00:20:18.549 --> 00:20:20.970 that GeoCities US would be closing. They stopped 00:20:20.970 --> 00:20:23.210 all new registrations, and they set the date 00:20:23.210 --> 00:20:26.529 of death, October 26, 2009. I remember when this 00:20:26.529 --> 00:20:28.609 happened. And even though I hadn't visited my 00:20:28.609 --> 00:20:30.970 old site in probably a decade, I felt this real 00:20:30.970 --> 00:20:35.059 pang of grief, almost. It was a brush with digital 00:20:35.059 --> 00:20:37.579 mortality. We were used to things on the internet 00:20:37.579 --> 00:20:39.660 being permanent, or at least feeling permanent. 00:20:39.880 --> 00:20:43.880 But suddenly, Yahoo said, we are going to delete 00:20:43.880 --> 00:20:48.680 38 million pages. 38 million. Just think about 00:20:48.680 --> 00:20:50.779 that scale. 38 million personal expressions, 00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:54.500 diaries, fan fiction, conspiracy theories, tributes 00:20:54.500 --> 00:20:57.460 to dead pets, family photo albums, all of it 00:20:57.460 --> 00:21:00.130 slated for the digital incinerator. Why did they 00:21:00.130 --> 00:21:01.789 do it? I mean, was it costing them that much 00:21:01.789 --> 00:21:04.549 to keep the servers running in 2009? Probably 00:21:04.549 --> 00:21:06.910 not that much, honestly. Storage had gotten very 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:08.970 cheap by then, but it wasn't making any money. 00:21:09.509 --> 00:21:11.809 Rupert Goodwin's at ZDNet said something really 00:21:11.809 --> 00:21:14.849 brutal but true at the time. What was that? He 00:21:14.849 --> 00:21:17.410 said GeoCities was the first proof that you could 00:21:17.410 --> 00:21:19.289 have something really popular and still not make 00:21:19.289 --> 00:21:22.450 any money on the Internet. Oof. That is the hard 00:21:22.450 --> 00:21:25.269 truth of the entire dot -com era in one sentence. 00:21:26.049 --> 00:21:28.509 Popularity does not equal profitability. And 00:21:28.509 --> 00:21:30.990 Vijay Mookie, a security expert, called it a 00:21:30.990 --> 00:21:33.690 lost opportunity. He pointed out that if Yahoo 00:21:33.690 --> 00:21:36.490 had just understood what they had, the social 00:21:36.490 --> 00:21:38.650 connections, the community, they could have built 00:21:38.650 --> 00:21:41.170 Facebook. They had the users. They had the social 00:21:41.170 --> 00:21:43.390 graph. They just didn't build the tools to connect 00:21:43.390 --> 00:21:45.450 them. They treated it like a file system instead 00:21:45.450 --> 00:21:48.150 of a society. It's one of the biggest what -ifs 00:21:48.150 --> 00:21:51.269 in the history of tech. But there's a weird little 00:21:51.269 --> 00:21:53.910 twist in this story, a survival story of sorts. 00:21:54.170 --> 00:21:56.630 A Japanese exception. Yes. Tell us about this 00:21:56.630 --> 00:22:00.089 parallel universe. So while Yahoo was shutting 00:22:00.089 --> 00:22:02.690 down GeoCities in the U .S. and Europe and everywhere 00:22:02.690 --> 00:22:06.529 else in 2009, GeoCities Japan just kept going. 00:22:06.690 --> 00:22:11.019 Why? Well, Yahoo. Japan is a separate corporate 00:22:11.019 --> 00:22:13.200 entity and in Japan the service was actually 00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:16.859 still quite popular. The culture of anonymity 00:22:16.859 --> 00:22:19.440 and personal avatars is very strong in the Japanese 00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:22.839 web and GeoCities fit that model. Much better 00:22:22.839 --> 00:22:24.900 than Facebook did, at least initially. So they 00:22:24.900 --> 00:22:26.640 just kept it running? They kept it running. For 00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:29.339 how long? For another 10 years. GeoCities Japan 00:22:29.339 --> 00:22:32.180 didn't actually close until March 31st, 2019. 00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:35.799 2019. That is wild. So while the rest of us were 00:22:35.799 --> 00:22:37.980 migrating to Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok, 00:22:38.319 --> 00:22:40.960 there were people in Japan still hand -coding 00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:44.079 HTML pages on GeoCities. It just shows that the 00:22:44.079 --> 00:22:46.779 death of a platform is often a business decision, 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:49.660 not a user decision. If the company wants to 00:22:49.660 --> 00:22:52.380 keep it running, the users will often stay. But 00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:56.559 in the US, the plug was pulled in 2009. And this 00:22:56.559 --> 00:22:59.319 is where the story shifts from a tragedy to more 00:22:59.319 --> 00:23:02.819 of a thriller. Segment 6. Digital archaeology. 00:23:03.180 --> 00:23:05.960 Because those 38 million pages didn't just vanish 00:23:05.960 --> 00:23:08.299 without a fight. This is my favorite part of 00:23:08.299 --> 00:23:10.359 the story. It's like the saving private Ryan 00:23:10.359 --> 00:23:12.519 of the Internet. When Yahoo announced the closure, 00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:15.140 they only gave a few months notice. Right. They 00:23:15.140 --> 00:23:17.500 didn't offer a tool to exprate your site easily. 00:23:17.559 --> 00:23:19.779 They just said, save your files or they're gone 00:23:19.779 --> 00:23:21.799 forever. And a lot of people had lost their passwords 00:23:21.799 --> 00:23:24.480 or maybe the creator had passed away in the intervening 00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:27.380 decade. Exactly. The data was orphaned. So a 00:23:27.380 --> 00:23:30.019 group of archivists mobilized the Internet Archive, 00:23:30.019 --> 00:23:31.700 the people who run the way back. machine, they 00:23:31.700 --> 00:23:34.160 stepped up. But the real heavy lifting, the heroic 00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:37.599 effort, was done by this rogue group called Archive 00:23:37.599 --> 00:23:39.799 Team. Archive Team? That sounds like a special 00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:42.519 ops unit. They kind of act like one. It's led 00:23:42.519 --> 00:23:45.059 by Jason Scott, who is a renowned historian of 00:23:45.059 --> 00:23:48.099 the web. They viewed Yahoo's action as an act 00:23:48.099 --> 00:23:50.940 of cultural vandalism. They basically said, if 00:23:50.940 --> 00:23:53.480 you won't save this history, we will steal it. 00:23:53.680 --> 00:23:56.400 So how did they do it? Did Yahoo cooperate and 00:23:56.400 --> 00:23:58.910 give them the data? No, of course not. Yahoo 00:23:58.910 --> 00:24:01.250 was actively throttling them, just like they 00:24:01.250 --> 00:24:04.190 throttled their users. The archive team had to 00:24:04.190 --> 00:24:06.390 write custom scripts, basically hacking tools, 00:24:06.609 --> 00:24:09.390 to scour the neighborhoods. They brute forced 00:24:09.390 --> 00:24:12.450 the URLs. They just started downloading every 00:24:12.450 --> 00:24:15.190 image, every MIDI file, every HTML page they 00:24:15.190 --> 00:24:17.130 could find. So it was like a distributed denial 00:24:17.130 --> 00:24:19.450 of service attack, but for preservation. Exactly. 00:24:19.609 --> 00:24:21.690 A DDoS for good. They were in a race against 00:24:21.690 --> 00:24:24.390 the clock. And on October 26, when the servers 00:24:24.390 --> 00:24:26.569 finally went dark, they had managed to grab... 00:24:26.569 --> 00:24:28.490 of a massive chunk of it. How much did they get? 00:24:28.609 --> 00:24:30.769 On the first anniversary of the shutdown, in 00:24:30.769 --> 00:24:33.470 October 2010, they released a torrent file. Okay. 00:24:33.549 --> 00:24:37.150 How big? Roughly 900 gigabytes. 900 gigabytes 00:24:37.150 --> 00:24:41.289 of 1990s web content. That is, that's incredibly 00:24:41.289 --> 00:24:43.630 dense. It's immense. It's millions and millions 00:24:43.630 --> 00:24:45.930 of sites. Now, it's not perfect. It's a broken 00:24:45.930 --> 00:24:48.670 mirror, as they call it. Some images are missing. 00:24:48.710 --> 00:24:51.589 Some links go nowhere. But it preserved the essence 00:24:51.589 --> 00:24:54.259 of it. And there were other projects, too, like 00:24:54.259 --> 00:24:56.799 Reocities, which tried to rebuild the neighborhood 00:24:56.799 --> 00:24:59.700 structure. Why does this matter, though? I mean, 00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:03.359 why save a bunch of ugly websites from 1998 with 00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:06.119 blinking text? Because it's folk art. It's history. 00:25:06.839 --> 00:25:09.660 If you went to a cave and saw stick figures drawn 00:25:09.660 --> 00:25:12.460 on the wall from 5 ,000 years ago, you wouldn't 00:25:12.460 --> 00:25:14.359 say, well, the anatomy is bad, let's scrub it 00:25:14.359 --> 00:25:16.640 off. Of course not. You would say, this is how 00:25:16.640 --> 00:25:19.519 they saw the world. GeoCities is the cave painting 00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:22.380 of the digital age. It captures a moment of innocence, 00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:25.400 of pure experimentation, of just, I was here. 00:25:25.880 --> 00:25:28.619 That is profound. It's the raw, unfiltered voice 00:25:28.619 --> 00:25:31.200 of the people before the algorithms took over 00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:33.359 and told us what to like. Exactly. So let's wrap 00:25:33.359 --> 00:25:35.220 this up. We've gone from the launch into Beverly 00:25:35.220 --> 00:25:38.059 Hills office to the billions, to the bust, and 00:25:38.059 --> 00:25:40.839 finally to the rescue mission. What is the big 00:25:40.839 --> 00:25:43.740 takeaway here? What is the so what of the GeoCities 00:25:43.740 --> 00:25:46.759 story? I think the so what is about the shift 00:25:46.759 --> 00:25:50.839 from creation to consumption. GeoCities demanded 00:25:50.839 --> 00:25:53.599 that you create. You had to learn at least a 00:25:53.599 --> 00:25:56.319 little bit of HTML. You had to make layout decisions. 00:25:56.539 --> 00:25:59.240 You had to physically build your digital home 00:25:59.240 --> 00:26:01.799 brick by brick. It was an active process. It 00:26:01.799 --> 00:26:04.160 was active. Today, for the most part, we are 00:26:04.160 --> 00:26:07.380 passive. We pour our content into pre -made molds. 00:26:07.700 --> 00:26:11.299 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they control the 00:26:11.299 --> 00:26:13.819 layout. They control the font. You just provide 00:26:13.819 --> 00:26:17.240 the data. We went from being homesteaders, building 00:26:17.240 --> 00:26:21.279 our own cabins, to being renters in a giant corporate 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:23.460 high rise. And the landlord can kick us out any 00:26:23.460 --> 00:26:25.660 time. And the landlord is spying on us through 00:26:25.660 --> 00:26:27.920 the windows. That is a terrifying but, yeah, 00:26:27.980 --> 00:26:30.460 very accurate analogy. The failure of GeoCities 00:26:30.460 --> 00:26:32.400 paved the way for the modern web because it taught 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:34.819 companies that hosting wasn't the business. The 00:26:34.819 --> 00:26:36.900 business was the data. The business was the ad 00:26:36.900 --> 00:26:39.819 network. Yahoo just figured it out too late and 00:26:39.819 --> 00:26:42.079 executed it far too poorly. I want to leave you, 00:26:42.160 --> 00:26:44.279 our listener, with a final thought to mull over. 00:26:44.519 --> 00:26:47.819 We talked about how Yahoo deleted 38 million 00:26:47.819 --> 00:26:50.940 pages with just a few months notice. And we tend 00:26:50.940 --> 00:26:53.779 to assume our current digital lives are permanent. 00:26:54.259 --> 00:26:56.599 We think our Instagram photos, our Google Drive 00:26:56.599 --> 00:27:00.339 backups, our Spotify playlists, we think they're 00:27:00.339 --> 00:27:02.400 written in stone. We trust the cloud. We trust 00:27:02.400 --> 00:27:07.279 the cloud. But if a giant like Yahoo can simply 00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:10.970 hit delete. on a massive chunk of human history 00:27:10.970 --> 00:27:13.490 just because it wasn't making its quarterly numbers? 00:27:14.029 --> 00:27:16.829 How safe is your digital legacy right now? If 00:27:16.829 --> 00:27:19.589 Google or Meta decided tomorrow that your neighborhood 00:27:19.589 --> 00:27:22.470 wasn't profitable, where would you go? And what 00:27:22.470 --> 00:27:24.089 would you be able to take with you? That is the 00:27:24.089 --> 00:27:26.269 question that keeps archivists awake at night. 00:27:26.390 --> 00:27:28.529 And it should probably keep you awake too. Make 00:27:28.529 --> 00:27:30.549 a backup, folks. Thanks for diving deep with 00:27:30.549 --> 00:27:32.569 us into the digital ruins of geocities. Always 00:27:32.569 --> 00:27:34.329 a pleasure. We'll see you on the next Deep Dive.