Lycos Search Engine History

This web portal was founded in 1994, drawn from Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also comprises social networking, web hosting, entertainment websites, and a network of email. The company is located at Waltham, Massachusetts, and is a Kakao subsidiary.

Lycos Meaning

Lycos meaning can be explained through the etymology of the word. The word ‘Lycos’ is derived from the Latin word ‘Lycosidae’ means ‘wolf spider.’

Lycos History

Lycos is a spin-off of a university; the company started as a research project and was founded in May 1994. Lycos was founded by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University in the state of Pittsburgh. It was founded through a CMGI funding of approximately 2 million US dollars as the capital venture. In 1995 Bob Davis become the first employee and the CEO of the newly formed company. He majored in developing the Lycos into an advertising-supported web portal, directed by Bill Townsend; he worked as an advertising vice president.

In the 1990s, Lycos enjoyed many years of growth. In 1999, it developed into the most visited online platform with over 40 republics.

According to Lycos history the company accomplished the initial public’s quickest offer from inception to providing in NASDAQ’s history in April 1996, completing its debut day by a 300 million US dollar market value. Lycos become the pioneer search engine to go public earlier than the arrival of its great competitors, Excite and Yahoo. The company achieved the opportunity of being among the profitable internet business pioneers in the globe in 1997. To venture into the market portal, Lycos acquired Tripod.com at 58 million US dollars in 1998. In October 1997, Lycos started providing services for e-mail.

In Europe, Lycos was a combined venture between Bertelsmann’s global media corporation and Lycos; however, it has always remained a separate corporate company. Despite Lycos Europe remaining the most significant Lycos venture of overseas, numerous other Lycos subsidiaries come into agreements of combined ventures, including Lycos Korea, Lycos Asia, and Lycos Canada.

In 1997, Lycos was ranked 8th as the most famous internet website; in 1999 and 2001, it was ranked 4th.

Lycos announced the acquirement of its intent by Terra Network, Telefonica’s internet arm, the Spanish giant of telecommunication on 16th May 2000, close to the peak of the dot-com bubble for 12.5 billion US dollars. The acquisition price signified a profit of approximately 20 times its valuation of the initial public offering and 3000 times the company’s initial capital investment venture. The company was renamed Terra Lycos after the transaction was finalized in October 2000. However, in the United States, the company continued to use the Lycos brand. In other parts of the globe, Lycos used the brand Terra Networks.

Lycos started using FAST after abandoning its search crawler at the end of 2001, due to disadvantages caused by the dot-com bubble burst.  Search engines such as Yahoo! were starting to take over market share after partnering with Overture.com in an effort to serve ads.

Terra publicized that it was selling Lycos to Daum Communication Corporation, a South Korea-based company, Seoul, currently referred to as Kakao. In 2004, it was a price of 95.4 million US dollars, lower than 2 % of Terra’s original multibillion-dollar investment. The transaction was finalized and ended in October 2004, and the company was renamed Lycos again.

Under fresh ownership, Lycos started to concentrate on its strategic plan. The company changed from operating as a portal that is search centered to the content of broadband entertainment for community destination. Under the new management, Lycos started divesting assets that remained insignificant in its new strategic plan. July 2006, Lycos sold Wired News to Conde Nast Publications, a portion of Lycos as from the acquirement of Wired Digital in the year 1998, and remerged to Wired Magazine. In February 2006, the finance division of Lycos, popularly known forRangingbull.com and Quote.com, was traded to Ft Interactive Data Company as Matchmaker.com; its dating site was sold to Date.com. Lycos reacquired ownership of Lycos’s brand from Carnegie Mellon University, permitting it to change its name to Lycos Inc.

Lycos introduced various media platforms such as Lycos’s phone, which offered a combination of real-time video on demand, video chat, and an mp3 player in 2006. In November 2206, Lycos started to enroll cantered applications on the platforms of social media, encompassing its video application, Lycos Cinema, which contained simultaneous chat and watch functionality. Lycos MIX was introduced in February 2007, and it permitted users to download clips of videos from Google Video, Myspace Video, Yahoo Video, and YouTube. It also permitted users to form playlists where other users could add chats and video comments in real-time.

As a section of the restructuring of the corporate aimed at location-based services, mobile, and social networks, Daum traded Lycos to Ybrant Digital, a company located in Hyderabad, India, specializing on the internet in August 2010 for 36 million US dollars. At the signing of the deal, Ybrant paid Daum 20 million US dollars, and legal disagreement has arisen on the second installment payment. In 2018, a court in New York ruled in Daum’s right turn and allotted Daum, then combined with Kakao to acquire 56% Lycos interests owned by Ybrant.

Former Lycos’ staff Rob Balazy was announced as the Lycos media division CEO in May 2012. Ed Noel was nominated to take Rob’s place and manage the functions under the title Lycos Media General Manager in September 2014. A combination of wearable appliances known as Band and Ring was announced in June 2015. May 2018, the internet of Lycos was rebranded Brightcom Group.

Network Sites of Lycos

• Angelfire. Offers blogging, publishing tools, and web hosting without paying.
• Tripod.com. also offers blogging, publishing, and free web hosting.
• Whowhere.com. A search engine for people.
• Weather Zombie. Offers weather forecast encompassing a zombie theme.

Branded sites of Lycos

• Lycos Weather.
• Lycos Yellow Pages.
• Lycos chat, a platform that offers photo chatting.
• Lycos Mails. An e-mail supplier and was previously named mailcity.com and only offered paid services as of 15 May 2018.
• Lycos Domains. The purchaser of internet domain names.

Former Sites Owned by Lycos

• Gamesville. Multiplayer gaming site.
• Hotbot. A platform that offers search engine.
• Matchmaker.com. A dating site.
• Ragingbull.com and Quote.com. Finance sites.
• Lycos Radio. Permits users to make and host radio shows through the internet.
• Wired.com. Online part of the wired magazine.
• Getrelevant.com. Advertising site.
• Webmonkey. Offers tutorials and web building aid.

Lycos Dog

The company logo bears the image of a dog beside the name ‘Lycos’ as a trademark logo. In the 1990s, a television advertisement featured a black dog, commonly referred to as Lycos Dog. The dog demonstrated the fastness, simplicity, and effectiveness of the search engine. The dog illustrated the fastness of Lycos’ ability to retrieve webs in the cyberspace. In the advert, the dog could be tasked with finding various items, and it would bring them back in seconds. This demonstrated Lycos’ ability.

Lycos Mail

Lycos mails was released in August 1994. It permitted the sending and release of large files encompassing unlimited file attachment sizes. As of 1st June 2018, Lycos stopped offering free mail accounts. Lycos mail features the following:

• 5 GB storage
• Domain address blocking
• Scanning of viruses
• Domain/address blocking
• POP3/IMAP Access
• Filtering of spam
• No inbox ads

Lycos Terms of Service

The following are the terms of use, which includes the policies and condition terms. They include future terms.

The terms may be revised or modified upon the sole discretion of Lycos. They are the requirement for using the Lycos mails upon accepting and abiding by them.

1). Description of Services.
Lycos provides unpaid and subscription varieties of its electronic mail services. In its sole discretion, Lycos reserves the right to regulate the storage amount of the available space and erase materials stored for a long time while the user’s account has been active. It also the right to erase any items stored concerning unpaid mail accounts for thirty days. The user’s account has been inactive. This agreement is bound to any subscribers of the Lycos mails account.

2). Use
The service is only available for user’s personal use. The age limit for usage is at least 13 years. The correct and information such as identification and contacts to enroll for the registration process. Lycos possess the mandate to deny the registration without presenting any notice or reason.

3). Member and Conduct of Users.
Upon the registration of the mail, a Lycos mail ID and a password are issued. The responsibility of maintaining the confidentiality of the mail ID and the password is upon the user and any other activity. The users agree to the immediate notification of any security breach or unauthorized logins. The user is advised to log out the mail-in when exiting. Lycos is not responsible for any damage or loss caused by failure to adhere to measures.

Additionally, the user agrees to the following term listed to the Prohibited Conduct under General Terms. The agreement bides the user not to undertake the following:

• Enable or generate unsolicited commercials. They include data mining, sending unauthorized emails, impersonations, sending emails to users who have requested to be removed from the mailing lists, selling email addresses to a third party, and sending emails in violation of anti-spam laws.
• Distribute, upload, disseminate, or send any content which is defamatory, unlawful, harassing, unlawful, obscene, infringing, or fraudulent or offer to undertake the same.
• Distribute worms, viruses, corrupt files, defects, Trojan horses, or any other destructive item intentionally.
• Forward or conduct pyramid schemes or any other related ideologies.
• Transmitting minor-harmful content
• Impersonation of another person
• Infringing another person’s intellectual property by illegally uploading, storing, or transmitting proprietary information.
• Violation of legal rights.
• Encouraging illegal activities.
• Creation of several accounts to violate the users’ agreement.
• Trading of unauthorized commercials.
• Erasing any trademark, copyright, or proprietary rights confined in the Lycos mails accounts.
• Reformatting of any part of web pages which are comprised in the Lycos mails service.
• Usage of Lycos mails services in unlawful peer-to-peer sharing of files.
• Usage of Lycos mails services in an unintended manner.
• Usage of Lycos mails services in a way that leaks Lycos to civil liability or criminals.
An account may also be terminated or suspended due to the user’s inactiveness, hence easing the user’s right to immediately use the services.

4). Content
The user agrees and acknowledges that the entire content such as music, software, data, text, information, messages, photographs, graphics, and videos posted are the user’s sole responsibility that the content originated from. The Lycos Network does not regulate the user, or third party posted service through the mail; hence the integrity, accuracy, and quality of third such part or user content is not guaranteed.

5). Intellectual Property Rights of Lycos
Certain content operated and available in the Lycos Network and Services is subject to copyright, patent, or other Lycos’ property rights and its affiliates, service providers, and licensors.

6). Warranties and representations
The User warrants and represents the complete information offered by Lycos to engage in the service. The user possesses the power, authority, and rights to enter into an agreement and undertake the needed acts hereunder.

7). Privacy
The user service user agrees to the terms of the Privacy Policy of Lycos Network and may be changed from time to time.

8). Account Inactivity
In case the user’s account has been dormant for 30 days, Lycos may decide on erasing any materials stored in relation failure to pay Lycos mails accounts.

9). Termination
The user may cancel their service usage or terminate the agreement without any reason by providing a notification to Lycos Customer service. The terminated account continues to exist up to two days of business before the account’s cancellation takes effect.

10). Indemnification
The user agrees to keep harmless and indemnify Lycos Company, its subsidiaries, parents, affiliates, licensors, employees, and officers against any expenses and claims.

11). Choice of Jurisdiction and Law
All arising legal issues due to the use of service are carried according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and apply to the contact made and to be entirely conducted within the state said. Any claims are settled via the commercial arbitration of the American Arbitration Association Rules.

Although facing stiff competition from rival companies, Lycos offers alternative internet services and has been one of the industry pioneers.