What happened to free web hosting?

amelen · 10-08-2007, 10:44 AM

I just posted a blog post that you guys might find interesting. It's not a comprehensive list, but a quick comparison of some of the big free web hosts from 10 years ago and where they are now. Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.webhostingmind.com/web-ho...b-hosting.html

The Stealthy One · 10-08-2007, 11:46 AM

Interesting post. Thank you very much for the information.

As an early user of both GeoCities and Tripod, I think it has been a sad ride watching them drop so low in terms of quality. It is, however, nice to see how successful you have been. Good luck for the future!

amelen · 10-08-2007, 12:15 PM

Thanks! I forgot to add tripod into the review! It's even more surprising to what happened to Xoom. When NBC bought them they promised to invest millions of dollars into the brand. I'm not sure what happened, but a year later the domain was pointing to a "network solutions domain parking" page.

The Stealthy One · 10-08-2007, 12:40 PM

I remember reading about Xoom going bust when it happened - I believe it was due to NBC having expectations that were way too high. I seem to remember the story going that they were basing their revenue expectations almost solely on advertising revenue continuing to dramatically increase. It wasn't so much that they ran out of money, as NBC gave up before giving it a real go.

amelen · 10-08-2007, 12:52 PM

Interesting! I know some people that work pretty high up for yahoo and they have said similar things about the geocities purchase. I guess yahoo just kept poring the money in. On the other hand we have the new google pages free web hosting and a similar offering from Microsoft. And neither of them are charging for the service or even placing ads. I don't even know how to compete against companies which are specifically looking not to make any money :\

The Stealthy One · 10-08-2007, 09:08 PM

Well, at least you can take comfort in the fact that the Microsoft service won't ever have the "cool" factor like Google does. And, right now anyway, one advantage over Google Pages is that they do not promote it very much/very well. So not too many folks know about it.

amelen · 10-09-2007, 01:23 AM

Google pages just became available to the public (non-beta) today or yesterday :\ And microsoft has a decent pull with the business crowd

aldo · 10-09-2007, 02:33 AM

Wow great stuff! Its really sad to see all those either disappear or completely switch to paid hosting. In my opinion in order to survive today you would need something like upgrades offered on your free hosting plans maybe also offer a paid hosting plan to so you have something to back the free hosting part, but thats just my opinion

The Stealthy One · 10-09-2007, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amelen

Google pages just became available to the public (non-beta) today or yesterday :\ And microsoft has a decent pull with the business crowd

Just trying to be optimistic about it.

amelen · 10-09-2007, 09:44 AM

LOL! Well I def. appreciate the optimism

There are tons of privacy issues with google pages. I just can't wait till it starts hitting the presses so it can scare people away from it

aldo ... that's prob. true. It's just sad that so many web hosts just forced-converted everyone to paid hosting (or tried to do that) instead of just offering that as an extra service for those who want it.