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Yahoo! GeoCities, the free web site service offering tools for early Internet surfers to publish their own web pages, closed its doors.

In the 1990s, when most hosting options were extremely expensive, GeoCities gave anyone the opportunity to build a custom web page for free and secure a small amount of virtual storage to keep their pictures and documents. Indeed, GeoCities’s free hosting space was the home for thousands of personal web pages and became perhaps the most significant virtual museum in the recent history.

Google's News Timeline
Somewhat quietly (at least for Google) Google Labs has relaunched two new products. You can read the details regarding the relaunch here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/hard-at-play-in-google-labs-with.html.

In separate announcements this week, both Google and Microsoft stated their intentions to join the ranks of OpenID providers. OpenID is a protocol which gives users a way to sign in to multiple websites and web services using a single login. At first glance this is great news for everyone, since OpenID has the potential to change the tedious "different login for every site" practice. However, the specific implementations of the two tech giants may harm the wider community of OpenID providers and supporting sites.

Advertising from Google will be displayed alongside Yahoo! search results, after the two companies reached an agreement for shared use of AdSense technology. The non-exclusive advertising agreement was announced shortly after Yahoo! ended talks with Microsoft over possible investment and acquisitions by the software giant.

In an official press release, Microsoft has announced its plans to return to the discussion table with Yahoo. This time the focus has been shifted from total acquisition to alternative, limited methods of cooperation. Sources are reporting Microsoft considers displaying ads next to Yahoo search results.

Google overtook Yahoo as the most popular online destination in the USA, according to the latest statistics by comScore. 141 million Americans visited Google online properties in April, compared to 140.6 million visitors for Yahoo. The search engine giants are followed by Microsoft's network of websites, with 121.2 million visitors, and AOL, which attracted 111.2 million people.