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The Internet

For Sale: Lycos.com 215

Posted by timothy from the make-an-offer dept.
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")."
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For Sale: Lycos.com More

For Sale: Lycos.com

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  • Crashing back to Terra, er, Earth... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:13AM (#8993252)
    Terra's aquisition of Lycos was an exercise in stupdity. See, Terra's a pretty big company with plenty of successful Spanish-language sites... but there's absoultely no synergy to be found in merging a group of English-langauge sites with Spanish-language sites. You can't share content accross the langages unless you have a ton of people doing translations.

    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.

  • Can't fool me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hamisht ( 197412 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:16AM (#8993269)
    (click on "Adults 18+ only")

    You won't catch me that easily goatse boy

    • Re:Can't fool me... (Score:5, Funny)

      by h0tblack ( 575548 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:05AM (#8993573)
      I didn't see the "18+" link, but was intrigued by "The Lycos 50:Most Searched Bush".

    • Re:Can't fool me... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @02:54AM (#8993963) Homepage Journal
      Their adult search engine is useless. I am just not satisfied with semi-clothed women showing a nipple at most, so I searched on some of my favorite things:

      -cream pie
      -zoo
      -gagging
      -scat
      -hentai
      -tentacle rape

      All of these gave the following answer:

      We're sorry -- either we did not understand your query or we do not yet have matching results. We have served results for "sex."


      And searching for "bukkake" gave me this:

      You have entered a search term or phrase that may relate to unlawful content or material. Rouze only indexes and lists the best in legal adult content. Results have not been provided for your search term, but are for the search term "sex". Feel free to take advantage of these listings, revise your search, or check out the other features on Rouze. Now go get what you came here for!

      This is useless. It's not a porn search engine. It's more like John Ashcroft.
      • It says Adults 18+ content, but, if they're doing this ...
        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").
        ... they got the numbers reversed, it should be Adults 81+ only - after all, Playboy is SO mid-last-century, and anyone who thinks it's cutting-edge on the sexual front MUST be senile!
      • As if John Ashcroft would even allow you to search for sex.
      • I really have no idea and have not heard the term before. Thanks!

  • Why pay for it now (Score:5, Funny)

    by Psykechan ( 255694 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:17AM (#8993279)
    I'll just wait until they fail to renew the domain and just pay the 35 bucks.

  • GRRRR (Score:5, Funny)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:18AM (#8993282) Homepage
    That means Tripod might not be around anymore. WTF are the phishers supposed to use now?

    *sigh*

    Oh well, there's always geocities...

    • Re:GRRRR (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:21AM (#8993298)
      Indeed, tough times.

      Who wants to host my www.paypal.com@josh24.tripod.com and www.wellsfargo.com@josh27.tripod.com?

    • Re:GRRRR (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) *
      That means Tripod might not be around anymore. WTF are the phishers supposed to use now?

      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)

        by Grakun ( 706100 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:56AM (#8993526)
        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!

        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)

          by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @02:42AM (#8993930) Homepage
          Although now they're "the smarter way to send money".

          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)

        by Bill_Royle ( 639563 )
        The sooner the free hosts go out of business, the faster Googlebots will crawl.
    • Oh well, there's always geocities...

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:18AM (#8993284)
    Ok so I go there, great a link for adult content, how convenient...to get your company banned from most schools, libraries, and company networks.

    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?

  • Put this on eBay (Score:5, Funny)

    by devilspgd ( 652955 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:18AM (#8993285) Homepage
    Hell, I'll give at least $50. It's a bit high for an opening offer given the current lack of reputation, but I think it's fair.

  • Awrigght! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tunabomber ( 259585 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:22AM (#8993307) Homepage
    A campy, old-school web portal for sale! I hope they accept COD. It'd look great mounted on the wall above my wet bar with all the vintage neon beer signs. Maybe when I can afford it, I'll get an Altavista to put up next to it. That would rock.
    • A campy, old-school web portal for sale! I hope they accept COD.

      How about Beenz?
      • How about Beenz [beenz.com]?

        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)

        by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:09AM (#8993587)
        How about Beenz?

        What about Flooz? I've got an eCard with Whoopi Goldberg's picture on it... how can that have become worthless?
        • I've got an eCard with Whoopi Goldberg's picture on it... how can that have become worthless?

          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
    • At least AltaVista has Babel Fish, which just added something like 20 new translators. Lycos has the "image hosted by tripod" thing, and that's about it.
    • It would make a great gift for one of the remaining dotcom billionaires to buy for an out of work friend.

      "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)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:23AM (#8993314)
    Horray! Its been 6 hours of reloading slashdot and finally we get a non-linux story.

    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.

  • Playboy (Score:5, Funny)

    by i love pineapples ( 742841 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:27AM (#8993334) Homepage
    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").

    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)

    by PurifyTheMind ( 774679 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:30AM (#8993365) Homepage
    I read once that business.com got the largest amount of money for being sold at something like eight million US dollars. If lycos.com came anywhere close to the 200,000,000 mark, that would be some kind of crazy record.
    • This won't exactly count as a pure-domain transaction because there's actually some remnants of a company attached to the domain name.

    • Re:Largest domain selling amount? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dmehus ( 630907 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:49AM (#8993477) Homepage
      No. Terra Networks wants to sell its entire Lycos, Inc. subsidiary for approximately $200 million -- not just the domain name.

      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
      • What I see Terra doing is lumping all these things together as "Lycos" (when it's nothing of the sort, but a bunch of independent offerings with little in common for the most part). They sell the shitty, unprofitable offerings (Lycos Mail? just guessing, what with all the spam) in with the offerings that actually have some redeemable value, and thus the purchaser ends up paying a lot for the services they want to buy, and then dump 2/3rds of what they purchase because they're worthless.

        Same basic thing tha

  • What else can you do with a failed site? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:30AM (#8993367)
    Got a failed domain that still has a few hundred thousand people a day typing it in forgetting that you bit the dust long ago? Turn it into a porn site and get some cash out of those otherwise useless hits... I can't even count the number of gone-under sites that have pulled that stunt.
    • Absolutely.

      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
      • This is unfortunately a major problem in the world.

        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
  • anyone else not get that link?

    must be some geographical based stuff going on.

  • Lycos was awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xintegerx ( 557455 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:33AM (#8993380) Homepage
    I only know the company only by their English web site - Lycos.com, having never spoken Spanish ever as far as I can remember.

    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)

      by OldMiner ( 589872 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:42AM (#8993442) Journal

      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.

    • Now, they've got "helpful" tools that try to install themselves without asking, and Wired News.

      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)

      by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:25AM (#8993650) Journal

      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.

      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)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:34AM (#8993384)
    Here's a quick field guide to some of the other pre-Google search engines...

    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)

      by dmehus ( 630907 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:56AM (#8993527) Homepage
      Verity, Inc. bought the enterprise Web search assets of Inktomi and Infoseek and is commonly used as the enterprise search appliance of choice at many large corporations. It renamed the product Verity Ultraseek.

      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
    • That's not even close to a complete list. What about dogpile and mamma?
    • Yea, but what about OpenText... search.opentext.com [opentext.com] used to give a stale, but workable search engine. The company has now since begun to sell their search engine to companies.

      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...

  • Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:39AM (#8993422) Journal
    My bet is that Microsoft will buy it. They have to do something with all that cash, and they want a search engine and more (redirected) traffic for MSN, which they are having trouble growing. If you cannot earn eyeballs, buy 'em.
    • My bet is on Ask Jeeves. They're profitable and have sustained positive cash flow. Lycos makes sense for Jeeves.

      If not Jeeves, I'll bet either InfoSpace or Primedia subsidiary About, Inc.

      Cheers,
      Doug

    • Re:Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
      Hrmmmmm I doubt it. not with that "18+ only" on their front page. MS is too conservative and mainstream for that - they'd get a huge "exploitation" hit from feminists, conservatives, and what have you. Granted ,they could change that, but we'll see.

      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)

    by brucmack ( 572780 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:40AM (#8993429)
    Google cache of lycos.com [google.ca].

    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.
    • How come for me in the top right corner of the 'new' lycos page it lists the top 10 searches as being:

      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++
      • The Lycos 50 Most Searched Bush

        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.

        -Brent

  • For Canadians (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ctrl-Z ( 28806 ) <timNO@SPAMtimcoleman.com> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:41AM (#8993433) Homepage Journal
    For any Canadians out there, the only way I can figure out to view the lycos.com page is through the Google cache. It seems that you get redirected to lycos.ca otherwise.

  • Smart Move (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sardak ( 773761 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:42AM (#8993437) Journal
    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").

    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)

    by Magickcat ( 768797 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:49AM (#8993482)
    Maybe SCO should buy it. Both companies have a similar client base and future.

    None whatsoever.

  • Clever Ploy (Score:4, Funny)

    by FrankDrebin ( 238464 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:53AM (#8993510) Homepage

    1. Put lame website up for sale.
    2. Place story on Slashdot.
    3. Show buyers the wicked hit counts.
    4. Profit!

  • Lycos... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `cificap_4k'> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:54AM (#8993517) Homepage Journal
    Lycos is the eighth largest web portal, with over three hundred subscribers. Their site features time and weather, email, search, an "About Us" page and a Terms of Service page.

    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.

    • with over three hundred subscribers

      sounds like a real deal ; )

    • Lycos is the eighth largest web portal, with over three hundred subscribers. Their site features time and weather, email, search, an "About Us" page and a Terms of Service page.
      Definitely a bargain at $200 million.

      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)

    by jcuervo ( 715139 ) <cuervo.slashdot@zerokarma.homeunix.org> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:54AM (#8993518) Homepage Journal
    Fun Search:
    The Lycos 50 Muppet Characters

    1. Elmo
    2. Kermit the Frog
    3. Cookie Monster
    4. Big Bird
    5. Grover

    6. Gonzo
    7. Miss Piggy
    8. Ernie
    9. Oscar the Grouch
    10. Bert
    Unless the hardcore pr0n is Bert and Ernie in a three-way with Miss Piggy...
    • I've always wondered about Bert's affinity for pigeons, though...

      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)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:57AM (#8993540)
    I guess the beancounters over at Lycos are still partying like it's 1999.

    Can someone go over and tell them about the dot-com bust please?

    $200m indeed -- bah!

  • 18+ White Noise (Score:4, Funny)

    by DakotaSandstone ( 638375 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:54AM (#8993759)
    Pr0n is the background noise of the Internet. Where there is no signal, there is pr0n. Radio has static, we have pr0n.

    If this is true, what does this mean for lycos.com?

  • Special News Report (Score:5, Funny)

    by NIN1385 ( 760712 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:56AM (#8993764)
    In other news this evening, the Lycos dog was killed when someone typed in the words "1986 Chevrolet Caprice Front Bumper" into the search field and hit the "Go Get It" button. Services will be held at the fire hydrant outside of Arlington National Cemetary at noon.

  • Lycos re-invention (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Vexware ( 720793 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @02:15AM (#8993836) Homepage

    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)

    by Good Sumerian ( 459878 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @02:16AM (#8993841) Homepage
    Come get some.

  • explains the spam then (Score:4, Insightful)

    by martin ( 1336 ) <<maxsec> <at> <gmail.com>> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @04:29AM (#8994268) Journal
    from lycos.com. All I get is junk advertising services etc.

    Sigh what a sad world - the only that's known to make money is pr0n....
  • I can still remember the huge spike in traffic to my web site in December 1994, after Lycos indexed my web site [dannyreviews.com] (then hosted at my university). Altavista came along nearly a year later, but Lycos was the first full-text web search engine (that I noticed, anyway).

    Danny.

  • re-inventing itself as a portal

    That's what all link-farms say...

  • 18+ (Score:3, Insightful)

    by adamofgreyskull ( 640712 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @06:47AM (#8994630)
    I'm the least prudish of anyone I know, my first graduate paycheck may well be spent on a terabyte SCSI array for my porn collection.

    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?
  • Imperious nerd: Lycos!

    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?

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