I like Yahoo. I always have. So the fact that I'm bailing on them and vowing to never, ever pay for any service from them might tell you something.

I think it was Cameron Berrett who wrote some months ago that Yahoo, that classic search portal, is little-by-little losing it. My problems with them started when my silly little Geocities site disappeared with no explanation. Had they not liked my little SSI hack? The banned Scientology literature? The vibrating maple leaf? I wrote them several times, suggesting that I would fall into line with their strange policies, but I never heard back.

I thought, maybe, Geocities wanted me to pay to break the rules. I signed up for Geocities Plus and happily uploaded a whole new site, filled with goodness. And then it disappeared again, except this time I was paying for a blank Web site. I wrote and wrote and wrote them, and like a naive but hopeful lover I thought maybe someone at Yahoo would notice what was going on and fix it.

To my horror I discovered that there was no actual Yahoo to call, toll-free or otherwise. So I sent one last, sad email, telling Yahoo Billing that unless I heard from someone, I was canceling everything, including the email forwarding service. Silence. And today I cancelled.