Lycos is an Internet search engine and web directory. It was born from a research project by Dr. Michael Mauldin of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1994. The original Lycos search engine went on to be used in Carnegie Mellon's Informedia Digital Library project.
The name "Lycos" is short for the Lycosidae, the wolf spiders, which actively hunt for their prey.
Shortly after the development of the Lycos Search Engine, the Lycos company was formed using venture capital and initial internal support from CMU. The CEO of the Lycos company was Bob Davis, a native of Boston who moved the headquarters of Lycos to Waltham, Massachusetts from Pittsburgh, and concentrated on building it into an advertising-supported Web Portal, arguably at the expense of the Information Retrieval research on which the company was founded.
Lycos Europe was a joint venture between Bertelsmann and Lycos, but has always been a distinct corporate entity. (Although Lycos Europe is the largest of the overseas ventures, several other companies also entered into joint venture agreements, including Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea, and Lycos Asia.)
The Lycos company was purchased by Terra Networks, a subsidiary of the Spanish telephone company Telefónica, in October 2000, and the merged company was renamed Terra Lycos yet the Lycos brand was the US franchise. (Overseas, the company continued to be known as Terra Networks, S.A.)
On August 2, 2004, Terra announced that was selling Lycos to Seoul, South Korea-based Daum Communications Corporation for $95.4 million in cash. In October 2004, the transaction closed, and the company name was changed back to Lycos, Inc. The remaining Terra half of the business was subsequently acquired by Telefónica.
Lycos suffered under competition from Google, which concentrated on driving its business primarily on the basis of fast, effective web search, but remains a viable business as of late 2005.
Lycos Network Sites
- Angelfire [1], a Lycos property providing free webhosting
- Gamesville [2], a Lycos site for online gaming
- GetRelevant, [3] a Lycos online advertising site
- Hotbot [4], a Lycos-owned search engine
- HtmlGear [5], a Lycos property providing web-page addons (guestbooks, etc.)
- Matchmaker [6], a Lycos dating site
- RagingBull [7]. a Lycos financial message board
- Sonique [8], a Lycos MP3 music player
- Tripod.com [9], a Lycos property providing free webhosting
- Quote.com [10], a Lycos financial site
- Webmonkey [11], web-building help and tutorials
- Wired.com [12], the online arm of Wired Magazine
Lycos-branded Sites
- Lycos Domains [13], internet domain name purchasing
- Lycos Mail [14], free email provider, formerly known as Mailcity.com.
- Lycos Planet [15], Lycos social networking and light web-building site. It is the successor to Lycos Circles which was shut down in September 2005.
External links
- Lycos Search Home
- HotBot, another search engine run by Lycos
- Angelfire, a Lycos property
- Tripod, a Lycos property
- Quote.com, a Lycos financial site
- Wired News, a Lycos property cf. Wired magazine
- Gamesville, the Lycos online game site
- Sonique, the Lycos audio player
- Daum Communications Corporation
- Lycos Europede:Lycos
Search Term: "Lycos"
Categories: Internet search engines | Companies based in Massachusetts
