Lycos
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Lycos is an Internet search engine and web directory. It was born from a research project by Dr. Michael Mauldin of 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 licensed the name, but has always been a distinct corporate entity, financially and operationally independent of Lycos.
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 in the Unites States. (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 early 2005.
Lycos Network Sites
- Angelfire [1] (http://www.angelfire.lycos.com), a Lycos property providing free webhosting
- Gamesville [2] (http://www.gamesville.lycos.com), a Lycos site for online gaming
- GetRelevant, [3] (http://www.getrelevant.com) a Lycos online advertising site
- Hotbot [4] (http://www.hotbot.com), a Lycos-owned search engine
- HtmlGear [5] (http://www.htmlgear.lycos.com), a Lycos property providing web-page addons (guestbooks, etc.)
- Matchmaker [6] (http://www.matchmaker.com), a Lycos dating site
- RagingBull [7] (http://www.ragingbull.lycos.com). a Lycos financial message board
- Sonique [8] (http://www.sonique.lycos.com), a Lycos MP3 music player
- Tripod.com [9] (http://www.tripod.lycos.com), a Lycos property providing free webhosting
- Quote.com [10] (http://www.finance.lycos.com), a Lycos financial site
- WebMonkey [11] (http://www.webmonkey.wired.com), web-building help and tutorials
- Wired.com [12] (http://www.wired.com), the online arm of Wired Magazine
Lycos-branded Sites
- Lycos Circles [13] (http://www.circles.lycos.com), the Lycos social networking site (beta)
- Lycos Domains [14] (http://www.domains.lycos.com), internet domain name purchasing
- Lycos Mail [15] (http://mail.lycos.com), free email provider, formerly known as Mailcity.com.
External links
- Lycos Search Home (http://www.lycos.com/)
- HotBot, another search engine run by Lycos (http://www.hotbot.com/)
- Angelfire, a Lycos property (http://www.angelfire.lycos.com)
- Tripod, a Lycos property (http://www.tripod.lycos.com)
- Quote.com, a Lycos financial site (http://finance.lycos.com)
- Wired News, a Lycos property (http://www.wired.com) cf. Wired magazine
- Gamesville, the Lycos online game site (http://www.gamesville.lycos.com)
- Sonique, the Lycos audio player (http://sonique.lycos.com)
- Daum Communications Corporation (http://innovative.daum.net/flash/corp_eng.html)
- Lycos Europe (http://www.lycos-europe.com)de:Lycos