Terra Sells Lycos

• Jul. 28, 2004

Bought for $12.5 billion in 2000, Lycos is a steal today at a mere $170 million.

That's right – TerraLycos will again just be Terra, as it has reached an agreement to sell Lycos to an as yet unnamed Korean company.

The writing has been on the wall for this for some time. Terra announced earlier this year that it was getting out of search and was going to focus on the then new product called social networking.

Now everyone is in social networking in some way – Google launched Orkut shortly after Lycos got out of search while MSN has been experimenting with an MSN type product called 3 degrees, which allows you to form groups, share music, chat and so on.

It is unfortunate that Lycos may yet be swallowed and potentially broken up by another large company considering the company's history on the web.

Before there was Google, before Yahoo! became a presence, and even during the time that Microsoft was trying to figure out how the heck to monetize the internet, Lycos was building an international internet presence.

Whether you were looking for a movie, or looking for a job, chances are you used Lycos for at least part of that search. In many cases in fact, people called Lycos home and launched all their web traffic from there.

Soon, however, it lost favor with American audiences who chose instead sites like Yahoo! and the still up and coming Google.

While still big in Europe, Lycos soon became the site that once was, as the web moved on without it.

Perhaps the anonymous buyer will breathe new life into the ailing portal. Only time will tell.

Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Enquiro.com