Lycos

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox website Lycos, Inc. (stylized as LYCOS), is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and is a subsidiary of Ybrant Digital.

Etymology

The word "Lycos" is short for "Lycosidae", which is Latin for "wolf spider".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

History

Template:More citations needed Template:Update 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Lycos started offering e-mail services in October 1997,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Lycos was one of the most popular websites on the internet, ranking 8th in 1997, and peaking at 4th in both 1999 and 2001.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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 Template:Lang, for $12.5 billion.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name=":0" /> 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.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref name=":0" /> In October 2004, the transaction closed and the company name was changed back to Lycos.<ref name=":0" />

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.<ref name=":0" /> 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<ref name=":0" /> to Condé Nast Publications and re-merged with Wired Magazine. The Lycos Finance division, best known for Quote.com and RagingBull.com, was sold<ref name=":0" /> to FT Interactive Data Corporation in February 2006, while its online dating site, Matchmaker.com, was sold<ref name=":0" /> to Date.com. In 2006, Lycos regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon University, allowing the company to rename to Lycos, Inc.<ref name=":0" />

During 2006, Lycos introduced several media services, including Lycos Phone which combined video chat, real-time video on demand, and an MP3 player.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref name="marketwatch1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite press release</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In May 2012, Lycos announced the appointment of former employee Rob Balazy as CEO of Media division of Lycos.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In September 2014, Ed Noel was appointed in place of Rob and manages the operations under the title of General Manager of Lycos Media.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In June 2015, Lycos announced a pair of wearable devices, called Band and Ring.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lycos Internet was renamed Brightcom Group in May 2018.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Lycos "End of free service FAQ" (dated 09 April 2018). Accessed 2018-04-12.</ref>)
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<ref name="fornas et all 2002">Template:Cite book</ref>
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<ref name="fornas et all 2002"/>
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

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External links

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Template:Web search engines Template:Daum Kakao Template:Dot-com Bubble Template:Authority control