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This article is about the search engine. For the former corporation Terra Lycos, see?Terra Networks. For the defunct European venture, see?Lycos Europe.

Lycos, Inc.

Type of business? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Subsidiary

Type of site? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Search engine?and?web portal

Available?in? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Multilingual

Founded? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? May?1994; 29?years ago
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Pittsburgh,?Pennsylvania,?U.S.

Headquarters? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??Waltham, Massachusetts, United States

Founder(s)? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??Michael Loren Mauldin

Key?people? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Suresh Reddy, CEO of?Ybrant Digital[1]

Revenue? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?$250 million (2009)[2]

Employees? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 450 globally (2017)

Parent? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??Ybrant Digital?(Brightcom Group)[3]

URL? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? lycos.com

Registration? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Optional

Launched? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? April?13, 1995; 28 years ago

Current?status? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Active

Lycos is a?university spin-off?that began in May 1994 as a research project by?Michael Loren Mauldin?of?Carnegie Mellon University?in?Pittsburgh.?Lycos Inc.?was formed with approximately US$2 million in?venture capital?funding from?CMGI.?Bob Davis?became the CEO and first employee of the new company in 1995, and concentrated on building the company into an advertising-supported?web portal, led by Bill Townsend, who served as Vice President, Advertising. Lycos enjoyed several years of growth during the 1990s and became the most visited online destination in the world in 1999, with a global presence in more than 40 countries.[5][6]

In April 1996, the company completed the fastest?initial public offering?from inception to offering in?NASDAQ?(LCOS) history, ending its first day with a market value of $300 million. It also became the first search engine to go public, before its big rivals?Yahoo!?and?Excite.[7]?Lycos started offering?e-mail?services in October 1997,[8]?the same year it became one of the first profitable?Internet?businesses in the world. In 1998, Lycos acquired?Tripod.com?for $58 million in an attempt to "break into the portal market".[9]

Lycos Europe?was a joint venture between Lycos and the?Bertelsmann?transnational media corporation, but it has always been a distinct corporate entity. Although Lycos Europe remains the largest of Lycos's overseas ventures, several other Lycos subsidiaries also entered into joint venture agreements including Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea and Lycos Asia.[10]

Lycos was one of the most popular websites on the internet, ranking 8th in 1997, and peaking at 4th in both 1999 and 2001.[11]

On May 16, 2000, near the peak of the?dot-com bubble, Lycos announced its intent to be acquired by?Terra Networks, the Internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant?Telefónica, for $12.5 billion.[12]?The acquisition price represented a return of nearly 3,000 times the company's initial venture capital investment and about 20 times its initial public offering valuation.[13]?The transaction closed in October 2000 and the merged company was renamed Terra Lycos, although the Lycos brand continued to be used in the United States. Overseas, the company continued to be known as Terra Networks.

Having been set back by the dot-com bubble burst, Lycos abandoned its own search crawler in late 2001, and started using?FAST.[13]

In August 2004, Terra announced that it was selling Lycos to?Seoul,?South Korea–based Daum Communications Corporation, now?Kakao, for $95.4 million in cash, less than 2% of Terra's initial multibillion-dollar investment.[13]?In October 2004, the transaction closed and the company name was changed back to Lycos.[13]

Under new ownership, Lycos began to refocus its strategy. The company moved away from being a search-centric portal and toward a community destination for broadband entertainment content.[13]?With a new management team in place, Lycos also began divesting properties that were not core to its new strategy. In July 2006,?Wired News, which had been part of Lycos since the purchase of Wired Digital in 1998, was sold[13]?to?Condé Nast Publications?and re-merged with?Wired Magazine. The Lycos Finance division, best known for?Quote.com?and?RagingBull.com, was sold[13]?to FT Interactive Data Corporation in February 2006, while its online dating site,?Matchmaker.com, was sold[13]?to Date.com. In 2006, Lycos regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon University, allowing the company to rename to Lycos, Inc.[13]

During 2006, Lycos introduced several media services, including Lycos Phone which combined video chat, real-time video on demand, and an MP3 player.[14]?In November 2006, Lycos began to roll out applications centered on social media, including its video application, Lycos Cinema, that featured simultaneous watch and chat functionality.[15]?In February 2007, Lycos MIX was launched, allowing users to pull video clips from?YouTube,?Google Video,?Yahoo! Video?and?MySpace?Video. Lycos MIX also allowed users to create playlists where other users could add video comments and chat in real-time.[16]

As part of a corporate restructuring to focus on mobile, social networks and?location-based services, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million in August 2010 to?Ybrant Digital, an Internet marketing company based in?Hyderabad, India.[17][18][19]?Ybrant Digital paid $20 million at signing and there has been a legal dispute over magnitude of the second installment between Ybrant and Daum. In 2018, a New York court ruled in favor of Daum and appointed Daum (by then merged with?Kakao) as receiver of Ybrant's 56% ownership interest in Lycos.[20]

In May 2012, Lycos announced the appointment of former employee Rob Balazy as CEO of Media division of Lycos.[21]

In September 2014, Ed Noel was appointed in place of Rob and manages the operations under the title of General Manager of Lycos Media.[22]

In June 2015, Lycos announced a pair of wearable devices, called Band and Ring.[23]

Lycos Internet was renamed?Brightcom Group?in May 2018.[24]

Lycos Network sites

• Angelfire, a Lycos property which provides paid web hosting, blogging and web publishing tools

• Tripod, a Lycos property providing paid web hosting, blogging and web publishing tools

Lycos-branded sites

• Lycos Chat, a photo chatting community.

• Lycos Domains, Internet?domain name?purchasing

• Lycos Mail, an e-mail provider formerly known as Mailcity.com. (As of 15 May 2018 providing only paid services.[25])

• Lycos Weather

• Lycos Yellow Pages

Former Lycos sites

• Chickmail, a free e-mail service sponsored by?ChickClick

• Chickpages, a free web hosting service sponsored by ChickClick[26]

• Estromail, a free e-mail service sponsored by Estronet

• Estropages, a free web hosting service sponsored by Estronet

• Gamesville, Lycos multi-player gaming site

• GetRelevant.com, a Lycos online advertising site

• Gurlmail, a free e-mail service sponsored by?Delia's?for?Gurl.com

• Gurlpages, a free web hosting service sponsored by Delia's for Gurl.com[26]

• Hotbot, a search engine

• InsiderInfo

• Lycos Radio, allowed users to create and host their own free Internet radio shows

• Matchmaker.com, a dating site

• Quote.com?and?RagingBull.com, finance sites

• Weather Zombie, a Lycos property which provided weather forecasts, with a zombie theme, via?AccuWeather

• Webmonkey, web-building help and tutorials

• WhoWhere.com, a people search engine

• Wired.com, the online arm of?Wired?magazine

References

1. ?"Suresh Reddy is CEO of Ybrant Digital".?e27.co. August 10, 2015.

2. ^?Pahwa, Nikhil (August 16, 2010).?"Lycos Sold To India's Ybrant Digital For $36 Million".?MediaNama. India. Retrieved?August 17,?2010.

3. ^?"Lycos Privacy Policy".?Lycos.com. May 11, 2023.

4. ^?Sherman, Chris (2003-10-08).?"What's In A (Search Engine's) Name?".?Search Engine Watch. Archived from?the original?on 2015-01-03. Retrieved?2019-02-13.

5. ^?Scott, Virginia A. (2008).?Internet Archive. Greenwood Publishing Group.

6. ^?Worlock, David (August 20, 2010).?"Paradigm Lost". Retrieved?April 14,?2013.

7. ^?"Lycos IPO bodes well for Net stock".?CNET. Retrieved?2019-01-28.

8. ^?Pelline, Jeff.?"Yahoo buys Four11 for free email".?CNET. Retrieved?2019-01-28.

9. ^?Price, Christopher (December 15, 1998). "Gateway to the future: Christopher Price gives the lowdown on the sites which offer not only a way into the worldwide web but so much more".?Financial Times. p.?16.

10. ^?"Lycos Asia seeks speed and performance".?ZDNet. January 17, 2001.

11. ^?"Infographic: Top 20 Most Popular Websites (1996-2013)".?TechCo. 2014-12-26. Retrieved?2019-02-03.

12. ^?Kleinbard, David (May 16, 2000).?"Lycos in $12.5B deal".?CNN.

13. ^?Jump up to:a?b?c?d?e?f?g?h?i?"Short History of Early Search Engines – The History of SEO".?www.thehistoryofseo.com. Retrieved?2019-01-28.

14. ^?"Lycos, Jajah Launch Internet Phone Call Services Today".?Los Angeles Times.?Associated Press. March 27, 2006.

15. ^?BYLUND, ANDERS (November 13, 2006).?"Lycos Cinema ties chat to movies; content library, technical details disappoint".?Ars Technica.

16. ^?Lowensohn, Josh (February 8, 2007).?"Lycos Mix fails to stir".?CNET.

17. ^?"Ybrant Digital Buys Lycos for $36 Million".?BusinessWire. Comtex News Network, Inc. August 16, 2010. Retrieved?August 16,?2010.

18. ^?"Ybrant Digital Buys Lycos for $36 Million"?(Press release).?Business Wire. August 16, 2010.

19. ^?Reisinger, Don (August 16, 2010).?"Lycos is alive, acquired for $36 million".?CNET.

20. ^?"Daum Global Holdings Corp. v. Ybrant Digital Limited et al".?pacermonitor.com. May 8, 2018.

21. ^?Reidy, Chris (May 7, 2012).?"Rob Balazy appointed CEO of Lycos".?The Boston Globe.

22. ^?"Ed Noel to head Lycos Media Division".?businesswireindia.com. Retrieved?2017-10-11.

23. ^?Kastrenakes, Jacob (2015-06-04).?"The web portal Lycos is releasing a smart band and smart ring".?The Verge. Retrieved?2019-01-28.

24. ^?"Lycos rechristened Brightcom - The Hindu BusinessLine". 11 May 2018.

25. ^?Lycos "End of free service FAQ" (dated 09 April 2018).?Accessed 2018-04-12.

26. ^?Jump up to:a?b?Ladendorf, Martina (2002-11-06). "Cyberzines: Irony and Parody as Strategies in a Feminist Sphere".?Digital Borderlands: Cultural Studies of Identity and Interactivity on the Internet. By Forn?s, Johan; Klein, Kajsa; Ladendorf, Martina; Sundén, Jenny; Sveningsson, Malin. Switzerland:?Peter Lang. p.?119.?ISBN?9780820457406.