Akira Toryama actually had decided to end Dragon Ball at the end of the Freeza saga, killing Goku. His publisher did not like it at all, as DB was a huge success, and demanded him to continue the series - which got very silly after that, with robots, time travel, and magic powers and body fusions. After the ending of DBZ, they tried to continue the anime series (not the manga) with Dragon Ball GT (stands from "Grand Tour"), with 56 episodes. It's horrible, and almost didn't envolve Toryama at all, who was "busy" with other projects.
Dragon Ball was not a good manga/anime, altough Toryama can be funny and creatived when he wants to. I'd recomend it to 10-15 year old kids.