History Search Engines - Lycos

Lycos – Born in 1994

 Lycos was one of the earliest search engines developed in 1994 at Carnegie Mellon University by Dr. Michael Mauldin and a team of researchers. The Lycos name came from the Latin term “lycosidea” referencing wolf spiders that hunt and actively stalk prey. The company was founded on $2 million in venture capital funding from CMGI. The company was headed by Bob Davis, who concentrated on building Lycos into an advertising-supported web portal. The company went public in April of the next year with little money. With phenomenal growth in its catalog, Lycos had the largest index at the end of 1996 with 60 million documents. In 1997, Lycos Pro was launched with a new search algorithm and continued to grow. By 1999, Lycos would emerge from a crowded pack to become the most-visited web portal. Over the next few years, Lycos would become one of the most profitable Internet businesses and acquired nearly two dozen high profile Internet brands.

For example, in February 1998, Lycos acquired Tripod Inc., a website where people built their own web pages. That summer, language search was introduced and the search results pages were redesigned. At this same time, WhoWhere Inc.’s directory services and Mail City’s email services were acquired for $133 million in stock. Toward the end of 1998, Lycos acquired Wired Digital (owner of HotBot) for $83 million.
By 1999, Lycos was one of the most visited search tools on the web and would continue to be involved in new projects and acquisitions. In February that same year, Lycos became USA/Lycos Interactive Networks when USA Networks bought a 61.5% ownership in the company for $18 billion. As a result, Lycos later announced a project to create a search tool to query information on USATODAY.com’s news site. In April 1999, Lycos joined the Open Directory Project run by Netscape. In June 1999, Lycos joined with Intelliseek to provide a directory of over 7,400 databases previously not on the web. In September 1999, Lycos acquired Quote.com, an investment information site and launched the Lycos Zone, an educational website for kids with content filtering. Finally, in December 1999, Lycos invested in FAST search technology which began powering Lycos advanced search technology.
In May 2000, Terra Networks, an Internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant Telef?nica, purchased Lycos for $5.4 billion, forming a new company Terra Lycos. This takeover marked a 3,000 times return on the initial venture capital investment and 20 times the initial public offering value. Lycos remained the name of the US franchise brand. Overseas, the company was known as Terra Networks, and founder Bob Davis left the company.
Lycos suffered from the dotcom crash in 2001. In late 2001, Lycos abandoned its own crawler and began serving results exclusively from FAST. In August 2004, Terra sold Lycos to Daum Communications Corporation for $95.4 million. This low number was less than 2% of Terra’s initial investment. By October 2004, the deal was finalized and the company name returned to Lycos.
With new ownership, Lycos refocused on becoming a community destination for broadband entertainment rather than a search portal. In July 2006, Wired News, which had been a part of Lycos since the acquisition of Wired Digital in 1998, was sold. The Lycos Finance division, known for Quote.com and Raging Bull.com, and it’s online dating site, Matchmaker.com, were also sold. Lycos also regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon University allowing it to become Lycos, Inc.
Since 2006, Lycos has announced the introduction of Lycos Phone, Lycos Mail, and Lycos MIX. These services and tools combine IM video chat, mp3 player, and unlimited file size sending and receiving via email, video watch and chat, and social media applications. Lycos remains a top 25 Internet destination, is the 13th largest online property worldwide and remains a top 5 Internet portal behind Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and MySpace.