For Sale: Lycos.com 215
prostoalex writes "Terra Lycos is planning to sell Lycos.com. The price, quoted by News.com.com.com, is in the $200 mln range, while the original acquisition amounted to $12.5 bln. Lycos is currently re-inventing itself as a portal for the new generation with the link to Playboy affiliate placed right on the front page (click on "Adults 18+ only")."
Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the original webcrawling search engines ended up getting bought up by somebody who didn't know what to do with it. So, it got shuffled asside into a "network" of poorly defined brand, and faded into obscurity. Lycos as a search engine is now worthless. Maybe there's some value left in the brand name for somebody who wants to do a relaunch, but this dog has been relauched so many times I don't think you can teach it any new tricks anymore.
The market scorecard shows it exactly... $200 billion going in, $12.5 billion going out. They misplaced 15/16th of the value that they started with.
Re:Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:1, Interesting)
What are you smoking?
Re:Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:5, Funny)
What are you smoking?
Sorry... 90s era accounting. Can I restate those numbers to be in the millions instead?
Re:Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:5, Informative)
That should be "$12.5 billion going in, $200 million going out"
Re:Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:5, Funny)
This is why you use OGG.
http://models.lycos.com (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:http://models.lycos.com (Score:3, Informative)
Re:http://models.lycos.com (Score:2)
Re:http://models.lycos.com (Score:2)
Check those numbers, please (Score:5, Interesting)
It's $12.5 billion going in, $200 million going out. Which means they've wasted more than 59/60th of the value.
As an aside: I don' think there ever was a $200 billion Dot-Com-Merger, was there? (How much was AOL-TimeWarner again?)
Jens
Re:Check those numbers, please (Score:4, Informative)
It ended up going through at either $106 or $109 Billion.
Re:Check those numbers, please (Score:2, Informative)
What value is that, exactly? I just checked, and the price for www.lyyyycos.com would be $200 for 10 years (pricecheck done here, there are lots of others) [4domains.com] so the way I see it, they haven't wasted value. They have started with a hugely inflated value which is now gradually nearing the boundaries of the real world (if there, indeed, is such a thing)
Re:Check those numbers, please (Score:3, Informative)
I remember wondering about that amount even back then: I mean, in 2000, Lycos was on its way down already. Perhaps it was different in the US, but over here, people were using Yahoo or Altavista, nobody I knew used for searching or news. (And yes, there is a German Lycos site.)
Interesting aside: Some time ago, Lycos launched a huge media campaign to regain popu
Re:Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:2)
--Joey
Can't fool me... (Score:5, Funny)
You won't catch me that easily goatse boy
Re:Can't fool me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can't fool me... (Score:2)
Yes, that's the "clan" to which he belongs. But he is a Muppet, so I don't see what the problem is.
Re:Can't fool me... (Score:5, Interesting)
-cream pie
-zoo
-gagging
-scat
-hentai
-tentacle rape
All of these gave the following answer:
And searching for "bukkake" gave me this:
This is useless. It's not a porn search engine. It's more like John Ashcroft.
Re:Can't fool me... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Can't fool me... (Score:2)
What does "bukkake" mean? (Score:2)
Re:Can't fool me... (Score:1)
Why pay for it now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why pay for it now (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's stupid enough to pay $35 a year to register a domain anymore?
Re:Why pay for it now (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why pay for it now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why pay for it now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why pay for it now (Score:2)
Re:Why pay for it now (Score:4, Funny)
I'll buy it. Will they take my VALinux stock certificates in trade?
GRRRR (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh*
Oh well, there's always geocities...
Re:GRRRR (Score:4, Funny)
Who wants to host my www.paypal.com@josh24.tripod.com and www.wellsfargo.com@josh27.tripod.com?
Re:GRRRR (Score:3, Interesting)
Xoom got shut down when General Electric gave up on their failed NBCi project. Angelfire is also a part of Lycos so they'll likely get the same fate as Tripod.
And then there was one... GeoCities is the last of the "free web hosting" companies left standing as an offshoot of Yahoo!.
Re:GRRRR (Score:4, Informative)
And then there was one... GeoCities is the last of the "free web hosting" companies left standing as an offshoot of Yahoo!
There are tons of free web hosting [google.com] companies.
When searching google for "free web hosting", notice how Xoom.com shows up on the first page. Although now they're "the smarter way to send money".
Re:GRRRR (Score:5, Informative)
People oughtta update their links. Most of us know that Google bases result rankings largely on how people link to that site with the relevant keywords (that is why Google Bombing [wordspy.com] is possible).
Apparently many sites still link to xoom.com with 'free web hosting' or similar. Just Google www.xoom.com [google.com] then click the "Find web pages that link to www.xoom.com/" link [google.com].
Re:GRRRR (Score:3, Funny)
Re:GRRRR (Score:2)
Or AloofHosting free web hosting [aloofhosting.com]
- 200MB disk space / 1GB bandwidth
- 2-line footer text ad, rather than popups or banners.
May 27th we're switching to link content ads (so we'll take up even less screen real estate) and upgrading our free hosting offering to 250MB disk space / 3GB bandwidth (metered daily.)
It's an exciting time for us.
10,000 websites hosted since Christmas.
Downhill from here? (Score:5, Insightful)
And on top of that, I can't even hit the back button (just keeps you on the front page) in firefox .8
Is this really the right direction?
Re:Downhill from here? (Score:2)
Re:Downhill from here? (Score:2)
Put this on eBay (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Put this on eBay (Score:2, Funny)
oh you meant 50 dollars
Awrigght! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awrigght! (Score:2, Funny)
How about Beenz?
Re:Awrigght! (Score:1)
Sadly lost ... and now (from the site) "Copyright 2004 (c) Car Rentals, Hotel Reservation, Discount Hotels, Airline Ticket, Airfare, Rental Car, Rent a Car , Cruise, Cruises, Vacation Rental Discounts, Rental Cars Online Shopping Mall."
I guess you can't be accused of keyword spamming search engines if that's the monicker of your firm... or something.
Re:Awrigght! (Score:5, Funny)
What about Flooz? I've got an eCard with Whoopi Goldberg's picture on it... how can that have become worthless?
Re:Awrigght! (Score:2)
I'll see your Whoopi eCard and raise you an authentic GroceryWorks.com [bizjournals.com] "Punch-A-Bunch" magnet. It's a business-card sized magnet / punch card. No idea what you got when you accumulated 10 punches, though it has a picture of a $100 bill in the 10-spot. I'm also unsure how they were planning to punch a hole in the thing -- it's at least a half-millimeter thick.
I'll put it on eBay one of these days. Another arti
Re:Awrigght! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Awrigght! (Score:3, Funny)
"Happy birthday, buddy. How would you like to move your blog to Lycos.com?"
-B
Horray: First non-linux story in 6 hours (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, Sun's Java Desktop System was insightful.
And Fedora Core 2 Test 3 was um, interesting.
The Linux Desktop Summit 2004 article was informative (wish I got some maple syrup and a t-shirt)
And the conspiricy theorys in the Turbolinux Licenses Windows Media 9 article were something to wrap my tinfoil hat around
But thank god, slashdot has returned to normal. A sexy search engine story to wet my apatite. Wait, is it how great Google is for running on Linux?! (/me reads TFA). Ok, were safe. Hopefully in a few hours a fud-filled gmail article will come up, or even better cmdrtaco will post this one again for double the pleasure, double the fun.
but seriously, about the maple syrup [slashdot.org], hook me up.
Re:Horray: First non-linux story in 6 hours (Score:4, Funny)
Just what you need... some wet calcium fluoride phosphate [reference.com].
Just the thing to whet [reference.com] one's appetite [reference.com].
Re:Horray: First non-linux story in 6 hours (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, Sun's Java Desktop System was insightful.
And Fedora Core 2 Test 3 was delightful.
But there's no more Linux to show...
Google IPO, IPO, IPO!
Playboy (Score:5, Funny)
While I'm familiar with many a washed-out pop musician turning to Playboy to boost an aching career, I'd never imagine this trend to extend to websites...
Largest domain selling amount? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Largest domain selling amount? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Largest domain selling amount? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lycos, Inc. includes: Angelfire, HTML Gear, Lycos Mail, Matchmaker, Quote.com, Raging Bull, Sonique, Tripod, Webmonkey/Hotwired, and Wired News. It also has partnerships to create several co-branded Web sites. So, there are very valuable assets here.
My prediction: Ask Jeeves is likely thinking very heavily about acquiring Lycos to expand its distribution further. (It recently acquired Interactive Search Holdings for $343 million in cash and stock. ISH assets include Excite, iWon, My Search, and My Way, to name a few.) The more distribution Ask Jeeves has, the more money it can demand from Google -- which accounts for 70% of Ask Jeeves revenue. It currently takes 80 cents on the dollar, with Google taking 20 cents. With the purchase of ISH, Jeeves can probably demand 85. With Lycos too, it could quite easily get 90 cents. So, financially and strategically, Lycos would make sense for Jeeves.
Other possible candidates who might be interested in Lycos include InfoSpace, Primedia subsidiary About, Inc., or possibly even Google itself.
Lycos won't die -- it'll just change hands and be restructured. I guarantee it.
Cheers,
Doug
Re:Largest domain selling amount? (Score:2)
Same basic thing tha
Re:Say that again? (Score:4, Informative)
Hope this helps,
Doug
Re:Say that again? (Score:2)
If I'm not mistaken, google works on a bidding system so the charge depends on the word.
Re:Say that again? (Score:2)
80% for ads clicked on an Ask Jeeves Web property, with 20% going to Google.
Cheers,
Doug
What else can you do with a failed site? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What else can you do with a failed site? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't even recall half of them anymore. There's just too many. It seems that there's more porn online now than anything else, let alone "ever before". Between p2p, broadband, and all the other 'traditional' means for aquiring the stuff, it's everywhere.
Now, being someone that isn't a terribly big fan of the stuff (it's goofy), and being a fairly big fan of the material that was there beforehand (educational, interesting things, largely), I'm a bit disappointed. All the good stuff is getting c
Re:What else can you do with a failed state? (Score:2)
All things ultimately cater to base forms of humanity when they cater to the majority.
The majority of humans care only about satisfying their primal appetites and nothing more.
The only question is, with the spectacular failure of the internet for the reasons you mention, how do we still have people who champion democracy and egalitarianism?
You would think geeks everywhere would realize the masses should not be allowed on the internet, let alone be allow
"Adults 18+ only" (Score:1)
must be some geographical based stuff going on.
Lycos was awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Lycos was very important to the world.
They had:
1) A web search engine. Who else had a web search engine besides Yahoo and AltaVista?
2) A web hosting service. Who else had a web hosting service besides GeoCities and AngelFire?
3) An e-mail service. Who else had an e-mail service besides Yahoo and Hotmail?
4) Web games. Who else had web games besides Yahoo and MPlayer?
5) News stories. Wait, no they didn't. I know Yahoo had those.
All of the above was sarcastic.
As you can see, in all five important areas, Lycos was not in the top of each one. Sure, you knew they had each of those, but they weren't leaders at all in ANYTHING. Their idea seemed to be to JUST EXIST and the millions of people on the Internet couldn't just all flock to Yahoo or AltaVista, right? There would always be room for Lycos, right? Even without R&D? A portion of the Internet would use Lycos regardless of competition, and as Internet use grows, Lycos would grow in popularity, right?
Uh, no. They thought, if there are 5 stores in a mall and they are one of them, passerbys, who were in the mall for one of the other stores, many of htem would still visit Lycos, right? Or at least look in. Makes a lot of sense.
However, the Internet is not like that. You could place a store next door to a competitor and steal his visitors. You can place a phonebook ad and steal your competitors visitors as their clients check the phonebook for your competitor's phone number but see your ad next to it. With the internet, an analogy is links connecting the dots. HOWEVER, the problem is, THERE ARE NO LINKS TO COMPETITORS. In other words, if you visit one guy's site, HE WILL NOT HAVE ANY LINKS POINTING TO HIS COMPETITOR'S SITE. Furthermore, all links will be designed to keep you INSIDE HIS OWN SITE. Therefore, actually LIMITING your awareness of other sites.
So, Lycos thought (apparently by their lack of R & D) that they would just advertise and exist and as people flock to Yahoo and Google, they would get a share. Uh.. NO?
The one major remaining portal is Yahoo. They are still leaders in e-mail, games, bought GeoCities, searching, and they had news on their site as long as I can remember. All of Yahoo!'s competitors just 'existed'. Just like hundreds of businesses 'exist' but nobody cares about them. Yahoo made you involved in their life. Yahoo is still kicking, having bought Overture, GeoCities, WebRing, Inktomi, HotJobs: God knows what else.
Even now, with Google doing what they do, Yahoo! is still the overall winner and success story.
Re:Lycos was awesome (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to be short on details because I'm a tad tired right now. But Lycos had a decent media search, back in the day. I clearly recall using it to find MIDIs because it kindly listed the sizes of the media with a link directly to the MIDI file. As such, it was normally pretty easy to pick out all of the different versions of a song there were out there. This was back when the advanced/media search was at lycospro.lycos.com [slashdot.org], IIRC.
Not having had a very impressive machine at the time, I can't state whether it was a decent enough MP3 search engine. Listening to them using whatever version of WinAmp existed at that time pretty much locked the machine to all other uses. But this did predate Napster, and people had to get their MP3s somehow.
Re:Lycos was awesome (Score:2, Interesting)
When their obnoxious little programs ended up on my box for the second time (despite countermeasures) I decided that Wired News wasn't worth dealing with the aftermath of visiting.
Re:Lycos was awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
I find this analogy quite interesting. It's similar in a way to one of the interesting things that General Motors apparently does, which I hadn't realised until someone pointed it out to me. Presumably it works for General Motors, though.
The theory is that if there are five brands of car on the market, then people who are shopping for a new car will pick one of those five, based on which one they prefer out of the available choices. If there are fifteen brands of car on the market, people will do the same. They have more choice, of course.
On the other hand, if ten of those brands happen to be owned by General Motors, then the chances are much higher that someone will choose a General Motors brand. It might not be completely even -- they might only get half of the custom instead of two thirds of it -- but the illusion of extra choice will prevent people from realising that a lot of those options are actually very similar to each other.
It's not entirely comparable, but the strategy seems to imply that sometimes just being there may be enough to get a significant amount of attention. As long as you're good enough to be considered. (That said, I agree that it clearly didn't work for Lycos.)
Where aren't they now... (Score:5, Informative)
AltaVista: Since it was born as Digital Equipment Corp.'s reasearch project rather than an attempt to make money, Compaq didn't exactly know what they had aquired. AltaVista suffered from an outdated ranking system and stale crawl data as it got passed from investment group to investment group. They ended up as a small fish in the Yahoo food chain at the end.
Excite: After merging with original cable-modem ISP @home, it all went down hill. An unprofitable website merged with a cable modem ISP who hadn't quite yet figured out that throtling user's bandwidth is a requirement to stay alive. In the end, they ended up selling a service for a price than less than it cost... and into the dot-bomb recycle bin they went. The Excite.com site is still up, but it's really just a less ad-intrusive version of iWon, and shares a lot in common with MyWay.com who is also from the same people. iWon, is of course known as a spreader of semi-spyware.
Inktomi/"HotBot": Inktomi got bought up by Yahoo!, and now powers the web results once again after being deposed by Google for a time.
HotBot.com was always just a licensee of Inktomi's data. It started as a spinoff to Wired Magazine, and ended up getting included in the sale of Wired News to Lycos. It's still ticking now as a unified interface for three of the web crawlers left standing... Inktomi, Google, and Ask Jeeves. They most likely will be part of this spinoff of what's left of Lycos.
Infoseek: Infoseek sold out at the height of the market to the mouse ears. Disney had the bright idea of uniting all of their web content under the Go.com brand, which also would allow all of the Disney-owned sites to share Go.com cookies so that a registered user's cookie from abc.go.com could also be read by espn.go.com. Infoseek would become the search engine portal that'd power the www.go.com portal at the center of the Go Network. A few years later, Disney realized their mistake. Nobody cared about the search engine portal... so they gutted the Go Network brand and turned www.go.com into nothing but a bare-bones portal with a Google-powered search. Inktomi as a search engine is no more. However, they did keep go.com domain in use in order to keep that cookie-sharing going.
GoTo.com: They were never really a search engine, they just licensed Inktomi's results. However, they invented the pay-per-click-search-placement model years before Google came on the scene. When Disney launched the Go Network, they sued saying that the Disney logo and branding was too close to their own, and won forcing the Go Network to change its logo. Shortly after that, they changed their name to Overture and got out of the direct search portal business. They've since been snapped up by Yahoo. Overture technically owns AltaVista just to show where they are in the pecking order over there.
Re:Where aren't they now... (Score:4, Informative)
Excite is now owned by Interactive Search Holdings, along with iWon and My Way. ISH is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Ask Jeeves, which Jeeves paid $343 million for in March.
Cheers,
Doug
Re:Where aren't they now... (Score:2)
Re:Where aren't they now... (Score:2)
I found opentext's search results very relevant at the time...this may have changed with time, but it was still a good search engine...
Archive.org [archive.org] still has the old front page...
Re:Where aren't they now... (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. Same concept... it's easier to share cookies when all the sites are subdomains of the same actual domain name. CNET's idea of buying up cool-sounding domain names like news.com and radio.com seems to have totally backfired...
Re:Where aren't they now... (Score:2)
In short, MyWay, Excite, and iWon all have the same base of content. It's just that...
- iWon bribes users with all sorts of contest entries. Of course, they get the money to run those contests by being one of the most ad-filled sites on the Internet.
- Excite cashes in on the memory of the original Ex
Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft (Score:2)
If not Jeeves, I'll bet either InfoSpace or Primedia subsidiary About, Inc.
Cheers,
Doug
Re:Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
As a search technology, lycos offers little. As a portal, even less (as MS likely already gets thousands of hits at their home page).
I imagine that MS's search engine attempts might start off as licensing Google's technology and 'enhancing' it. The enhancement
Google Cache (Score:5, Informative)
The "reinvention" mentioned in the original posting seems to only apply to the US site, and other countries appear to be automatically redirected. So here's the link for anyone who can't see the site.
The sites are completely different, it isn't just the adults 18+ link.
Re:Google Cache (Score:2)
The Lycos 50Most Searched Bush
George W. Bush
Barney Bush
Sophia Bush
Jeb Bush
Laura Bush
Kate Bush
Barbara Bush
Jenna Bush
George H.W Bush
Millie Bush
HUH? How could that be true??? or are peopl just searching for 'Bush' expecting pr0n?
--jeff++
Re:Google Cache (Score:2)
This is the list of the top 10 search strings that include "bush". When I looked at the front page they had a list of the top 10 "muppets" search. Obviously, they are listing random terms.
-BrentFor Canadians (Score:5, Interesting)
Smart Move (Score:5, Insightful)
They've obviously realized like so many others that porn is the real gold mine of the internet.
Darl should snap it up (Score:4, Funny)
None whatsoever.
Clever Ploy (Score:4, Funny)
Lycos... (Score:5, Interesting)
Definitely a bargain at $200 million.
Maybe someone could turn it into a sort of "living museum" so future generations can experience an actual late 20th century web portal. Little footnotes* indicating areas of historical interest could be added.
*Like this one. Footnotes are used to convey additional information without interrupting the flow of the text.
Re:Lycos... (Score:2)
sounds like a real deal ; )
Re:Lycos... (Score:2)
You know what? Someone said that a few years back - "Y'know, Lycos is definitely a bargain at $12.5 BILLION".
The truth is, it's not a bargain at $200 unless it's making $14 million a year clear profit bare minimum. AFAIK it's making a rather hefty loss at the moment.
The only way it's a bargain
Uh, k. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh, k. (Score:2)
Seriously, though, there was a hilarious little joke thrown in a sketch I saw recently (I've got 3 toddlers in the house, so Sesame Street is real big around here), that might be appropriate here.
Bert walks into the room and sees Ernie talking into a banana like it was a telephone. Bert's like, "what are you doing?", and Ernie explains that he's pretending to talk Gladys the Elephant on the banana. He cajoles Bert into trying a turn ("I'm
Partying like it's 1999 (Score:4, Funny)
Can someone go over and tell them about the dot-com bust please?
$200m indeed -- bah!
18+ White Noise (Score:4, Funny)
If this is true, what does this mean for lycos.com?
Special News Report (Score:5, Funny)
Lycos re-invention (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not know if only I feel this way about the look of the new Lycos website design, but do you not think it looks somewhat cheap and unprofessional, in the style of "search engines" which are in fact just advertisement whores [jester.com] appearing in various pastly infamous domains? The front page looks hideous as the preponderant yellow does not look nice at all. As for the links of 'top searches', it could be "helpful", but at the same time, what that section mostly does is clutter up my screen with links I mostly do not care about. The links to Lycos' other services are existant albeit the general layout and design makes the page look amateurish and cheap.
The search results page is not too bad, and the news search results page bearing the same design, then that aspect is alright in a sufficient way; but the image search results page definitly loses out to Google 's [google.com] in my opinion -- the system warned me that the files I was about to view contain adult material, when in fact they didn't, and the search results' layout itself was idiotic. As for the shopping section, I believe Google's Froogle [google.com] does a good stab at this section, and even more impressively so since it is more recent than Lycos'. I also forget to mention the ridiculous web hosting service, which is just truly unsatisfying in terms of space and service itself.
All in all, I think Lycos is just relying on its reputation now, just as MSN Search is relying on users utilizing Internet Explorer's search function. The problem is, it is already beaten by far by Yahoo! and probably Google will progressively transform into a web portal itself, albeit a much less cluttered one than the currently existing platforms. If you ask me, Lycos' death will not be anytime soon though, because there are still thousands of people relying on its services for now; still, it is just a matter of time I would say.
Lycos... (Score:3, Funny)
explains the spam then (Score:4, Insightful)
Sigh what a sad world - the only that's known to make money is pr0n....
December 1994 (Score:2)
Danny.
Bad CEO speak... (Score:2)
That's what all link-farms say...
18+ (Score:3, Insightful)
However, 2 links from the lycos home-page are naked boobs, and 3 links away are 5meg hardcore porn clips. I think this is a bit much. If I want to see "Hot Moms" getting banged I'm quite capable of finding them myself using Google. This involves an active step on my part.
Is it just me, or is this a bad thing?
Does lycos change its home page over time (Score:2)
Remember those old Lycos ads... (Score:2, Funny)
Big dog: Wwwooof!
Imperious nerd: Fetch me a business model!
Big dog: Wwwooof! [Whooshing noise as faithful LYCOS rushes off into the jungles of cyberspace (oooooh!) to fetch his master a business model.]
[Dead air]
Imperious nerd: Lycos? LYCOS?