Yahoo Inc announced that its going to shutdown GeoCities a free website-design service which the firm purchased for $3-billion in 1999.

News reports from 1999 about Yahoo’s acquisition of the service clearly show the exuberance of that period’s tech bubble.

On January 28 1999, Yahoo traded at $367.75 and GeoCities shares sold at $117 when the deal was revealed. Based on stock prices, the deal between the two companies was valued at $3.6 billion. By contrast, Yahoo stocks was trading $14.36-$14.94 range on April 24, 2009 and for the last quarter Yahoo reported it revenues of $1.58 billion , a dip of 13 percent from the same quarter in 2008.

In the course of time, many social networking sites were born such as Facebook and Twitter which is undoubtedly more user-friendly and become substitute for consumers in presenting themselves.

The shutdown will come later in 2009, although Yahoo declined to specify an exact date.