The end of free web-site hosting? Email from theGlobe.com: "As you know, we will no longer provide Web site services later this month. However, we're proud to have an agreement with Homestead to provide you with their premier Web site building services." The pitch goes on for subscription-based hosting from HomeStead (which used to be entirely free). Will free web sites soon be a thing of the past? Doubtful. I think web site hosting will, increasingly, be bundled in with other types of services (if you call that free), or used as a loss-leader. But free web sites as a business is surely an idea who's time has past. The ones that are still standing in this once-overcrowded market seem to be either very small players or those that were purchased by much larger entities and are (I suspect) treated largely as traffic-generating loss-leaders: Yahoo's GeoCities, Lycos' Tripod and Angelfire, and About's Freeservers. Update: There are probabaly still a few around.