SAN FRANCISCO, USA - Yahoo! said Thursday it will close its GeoCities service that provides people a free online locale for home pages.

The announcement comes two days after the struggling Internet pioneer posted lackluster earnings and its newly enthroned chief executive assured investors that the company is focusing its resources on core strengths.

"We will be closing GeoCities later this year," Yahoo! said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

"As part of Yahoo!'s ongoing effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers and results for advertisers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others."

GeoCities is a web hosting service founded in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet and bought by Yahoo! for more than three billion dollars during the height of the infamous dot-com boom in Silicon Valley.

GeoCities provided people with tools to build interactive websites and eventually added chat forums and other community-oriented features.

A notice at GeoCities on Thursday said it is no longer accepting new accounts.

Yahoo! added fee premium services in an effort to make money at GeoCities, which had trouble retaining users and getting profitable.

GeoCities joins a list of recently discontinued Yahoo! services including Farechase, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase and Yahoo! for Teachers, according to the Sunnyvale, California-based firm.