Lycos facts for kids
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A screenshot of Lycos.com as of 2015
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| Type of business | Subsidiary |
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Type of site
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Search engine and web portal |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Founded | May 1994 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Headquarters | Waltham, Massachusetts, United States |
| Founder(s) | Michael Loren Mauldin |
| Key people | Suresh Reddy, CEO of Ybrant Digital |
| Revenue | $250 million (2009) |
| Employees | 450 globally (2017) |
| Parent | Ybrant Digital (Brightcom Group) |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | April 13, 1995 |
| Current status | Active |
Lycos, Inc. is a company that runs a web search engine and a web portal. It was started in 1994 as a project from Carnegie Mellon University.
Lycos also has many other websites. These include sites for email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment. The company is located in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is owned by a company called Ybrant Digital.
Contents
What Does Lycos Mean?
The name "Lycos" comes from a Latin word. It is short for "Lycosidae," which means "wolf spider."
The Story of Lycos
Lycos started in May 1994 as a research project. It was created by Michael Loren Mauldin at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Early Days and Growth
Lycos Inc. officially became a company with about $2 million in funding. This money came from a company called CMGI.
In 1995, Bob Davis became the CEO. He focused on making Lycos a popular website that used advertising. Lycos grew a lot in the 1990s. By 1999, it was the most visited website in the world. It was available in over 40 countries.
Going Public and New Services
In April 1996, Lycos became a public company. This means its shares could be bought and sold on the stock market. It was the fastest company to do this on NASDAQ. Its value was $300 million on its first day.
Lycos was the first search engine to go public. This happened before other big names like Yahoo! and Excite. In October 1997, Lycos started offering e-mail services. That same year, it became one of the first profitable internet businesses.
In 1998, Lycos bought Tripod.com for $58 million. This helped Lycos become an even bigger "web portal." A web portal is a website that offers many services in one place.
Global Reach and Popularity
Lycos Europe was a partnership between Lycos and a large media company called Bertelsmann. Lycos also had partnerships in other places. These included Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea, and Lycos Asia.
Lycos was very popular online. It was the 8th most visited website in 1997. It reached its highest popularity in 1999 and 2001, ranking 4th.
Changes in Ownership
In May 2000, Lycos announced it would be bought by Terra Networks. This was the internet part of a Spanish phone company called Telefónica. The deal was worth $12.5 billion.
The sale was completed in October 2000. The new company was called Terra Lycos. However, the Lycos name was still used in the United States.
After the "dot-com bubble" burst, Lycos changed its search technology. In late 2001, it stopped using its own search system. Instead, it started using technology from FAST.
In August 2004, Terra sold Lycos to a South Korean company called Daum Communications. The price was $95.4 million. In October 2004, the company's name changed back to Lycos.
New Focus and Services
Under its new owners, Lycos changed its plan. It became less about being just a search portal. It focused more on being a place for entertainment content.
Lycos also sold off parts of its business that didn't fit its new plan. For example, in 2006, Wired News was sold. Its finance sites, Quote.com and RagingBull.com, were also sold. The dating site, Matchmaker.com, was sold too.
In 2006, Lycos got back the ownership of its trademark from Carnegie Mellon University. This allowed the company to officially rename itself Lycos, Inc.
During 2006, Lycos launched new media services. These included Lycos Phone, which had video chat and an MP3 player. In November 2006, Lycos started social media applications. Lycos Cinema allowed users to watch videos and chat at the same time.
In February 2007, Lycos MIX was launched. This allowed users to combine video clips from sites like YouTube and MySpace. Users could also make playlists and chat in real-time.
Latest Developments
In August 2010, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million. It was bought by Ybrant Digital, an Internet marketing company from India.
In June 2015, Lycos announced two wearable devices. These were called Band and Ring.
In May 2018, Lycos Internet changed its name to Brightcom Group.
Lycos Network Websites
Lycos owns several other websites. Here are some of them:
- Angelfire: This site offers paid web hosting, blogging, and tools to create websites.
- Tripod: This site also provides paid web hosting, blogging, and web publishing tools.
Lycos-Branded Websites
These are websites that use the Lycos name:
- Lycos Chat: A community for chatting with photos.
- Lycos Domains: A place to buy internet domain names.
- Lycos Mail: An e-mail service that used to be called Mailcity.com. As of May 2018, it offers only paid services.
- Lycos Weather: Provides weather forecasts.
- Lycos Yellow Pages: A directory for finding businesses.
Former Lycos Websites
Lycos used to own these websites, but they are no longer part of the company:
- Chickmail: A free e-mail service.
- Chickpages: A free web hosting service.
- Estromail: A free e-mail service.
- Estropages: A free web hosting service.
- Gamesville: A site for multi-player games.
- Gurlmail: A free e-mail service for Gurl.com.
- Gurlpages: A free web hosting service for Gurl.com.
- Hotbot: A search engine.
- Lycos Radio: Allowed users to create their own free internet radio shows.
- Matchmaker.com: A dating site.
- Quote.com and RagingBull.com: Websites about finance.
- Weather Zombie: Provided weather forecasts with a zombie theme.
- Webmonkey: Offered help and tutorials for building websites.
- WhoWhere.com: A search engine for finding people.
- Wired.com: The online version of Wired magazine.
See also
In Spanish: Lycos para niños
- List of search engines
- Search engine
- Comparison of search engines
