You read that right. Lycos, the search portal from about a decade ago, is apparently still alive and kicking. Today, they were sold by Daum Communications of Korea to Ybrant Digital of India for about $36 million. Daum initially purchased Lycos for $95 million back in 2004. Before that, in 2000, Lycos was acquired by Terra Networks for $12.5 billion. This most recent transaction shows a huge decrease in value for Lycos, but also a reasonable price for Ybrant.
Lycos came into being back in ‘94, the same year Bone Thugs-n-Harmony dropped their first hit album “Creepin on Ah Come Up.” If you don’t know either name, please get off my lawn. They went public soon after in 1996 and took full advantage of the dot-com boom, acquiring sites like Tripod, Angelfire, and Wired.com, then selling to Terra Networks. It wasn’t just a search engine, but a comprehensive portal of just about everything web you could think of: blogging, hosting, games, social networking, and e-commerce. They had the whole enchilada.
Even though their value has dropped by almost 50%, Lycos claims 12 to 15 million monthly unique visitors in the United States, on average. They are also one of the top 25 Internet destinations worldwide with a reach of nearly 60 million unique visitors around the world.
Over the past few years, Ybrant has acquired Australian ad network company Max Interactive, Israeli ad firm Oridian ($13.5 million), US-based DW Net Ventures LLC / MediosOne ($4 million), Serbia-based Seenetix for its flagship bulk emailing product VoloMP ($2.2 million) and US- based Pennyweb Inc ($10 million) and Argentina based ad network DreamAd.
According to Daum, they are not simply dumping Lycos, which they say has been profitable, but want to focus on domestic business. From Ybrant’s earlier acquisitions, it looks like the Lycos brand fits nicely within their strategy.
“Brand Lycos needs no introduction, we are excited to bring in the Lycos properties into our fold,” said Suresh Reddy, chairman and CEO of Ybrant Digital in a press release. “The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world. Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant’s global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide. Coupled with our offerings for advertisers, we do present new products to our local users worldwide.”
via Mass High Tech, Medianama