Hi!
I'm one who has most of my genealogy research posted on my GeoCities pages.
There's also photographs of some of my ancestors, plus photos of some of my
own paintings, and web page graphics I created myself, on "my" web site.
....The YahooGeoCities merger created at least 4 hours of frustration for me
yesterday. My GeoCities e-mail address has been my 'permenent' e-mail address
since 1996. It's the one I've given out for all my genealogy contacts. But
this "great new merger" has messed with it....
I've been a member of GeoCities since 1996, when it was fresh & individual.
Later, my sister, my husband and our three sons also created their own
GeoCities web pages... My husband has his Master's Thesis --hours of his own
work and research-- on "his" web page. My sister has some beautiful
photographs of Yellowstone National Park on her web page, which she took
herself during a vacation. All of which are now supposedly the property of
Yahoo... without even asking us about it. And that's just the tip of the
iceburg.
I visited the GeoCities home page yesterday, for the first time in a few
weeks. They are merging the existing GeoCities memberships with Yahoo
memberships... so now I've been forced into being a member of Yahoo, with a
new Yahoo member name & the works. (I'm a member of Excite, because I like
the Excite interface better. If I wanted to be a member of Yahoo, I would
have done it already.) So now I have to use my 'new' Yahoo member name to
acces my GeoCities page files. They also saw fit to force me into a new Yahoo
e-mail address. ... I can still use my old myriad(a)geocities.com e-mail
addy... but it's all being forwarded to some new myriad_1967(a)yahoo.com
address ...which I can in turn forward to yet another e-mail address...
**IF** I allow them to send me "special offers" & stuff from Yahoo (just
what
I don't need -- more junk mail). If I *don't* accept Yahoo promotions in
my e-mail, I can't forward the e-mail to another address -- !!! I'll have to
read my myriad(a)geocities.com e-mail online at Yahoo, through Yahoo mail,
with a Yahoo membership & Yahoo address I didn't even want. !!! Like I said
before, I've had that Geocities e-mail address for years; it's the one I've
based all my genealogy contacts on. (OH -- All new GeoCities members won't
get geocities e-mail addresses, they'll get Yahoo e-mail addresses, under the
same terms as above.)
GeoCities has also switched to using a Yahoo-like web page. It doesn't look
like GeoCities merged with Yahoo. It looks more like Yahoo completely took
over GeoCities. GeoCities is not GeoCities anymore. It's just another
section of Yahoo.
I'm "this close" to finding another home for my family's web pages....
except,
collectively, we have hundreds of web pages in our accounts (plus graphics),
which other people have linked to, including our genealogy info.... including
my Caswell page that Mikes's Caswell Family History page is linked to. Not to
mention haveing to re-establish those web pages with the search engines,
various genealogy spots, our Link Exchange banners, etc. So, I could go
ahead and move us to another web page provider... if I'm willing to put in the
massive time & effort to do so.
Some "great merger".
:-P
Melissa Caswell Birkholz
Brian K Luginbill wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: W. David Samuelsen <dsam(a)wasatch.com>
To: BURCH-L(a)rootsweb.com <BURCH-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 30, 1999 1:37 AM
Subject: [BURCH-L] Yahoo/Geocities Takeover of YOUR sites
>http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/20472.html
>http://www.internetnews.com/wd-news/article/0,1087,10_147231,00.html
>
>this was posted TODAY, July 29, 1999
>
>There are many genealogy sites at Yahoo/Geocities
>
>If you have your site there, Yahoo/Geocities stole your site and
>declared them their own. Including your copyrights and refusal to pay
>royalties to you.
>
>Feel free to circulate this message to other lists not receiving this
>alert.
>
>W. David Samuelsen
>
>
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