For Sale: Lycos.com

prostoalex writes "Terra Lycos is planning to sell Lycos.com. The price, quoted by News.com.com.com, is in the $200 mln range, while the original acquisition amounted to $12.5 bln. Lycos is currently re-inventing itself as a portal for the new generation with the link to Playboy affiliate placed right on the front page (click on "Adults 18+ only")."

Comments

What else can you do with a failed site?

[LostCluster]

Got a failed domain that still has a few hundred thousand people a day typing it in forgetting that you bit the dust long ago? Turn it into a porn site and get some cash out of those otherwise useless hits... I can't even count the number of gone-under sites that have pulled that stunt.

Re:Largest domain selling amount?

[dmehus]

No. Terra Networks wants to sell its entire Lycos, Inc. subsidiary for approximately $200 million -- not just the domain name.

Lycos, Inc. includes: Angelfire, HTML Gear, Lycos Mail, Matchmaker, Quote.com, Raging Bull, Sonique, Tripod, Webmonkey/Hotwired, and Wired News. It also has partnerships to create several co-branded Web sites. So, there are very valuable assets here.

My prediction: Ask Jeeves is likely thinking very heavily about acquiring Lycos to expand its distribution further. (It recently acquired Interactive Search Holdings for $343 million in cash and stock. ISH assets include Excite, iWon, My Search, and My Way, to name a few.) The more distribution Ask Jeeves has, the more money it can demand from Google -- which accounts for 70% of Ask Jeeves revenue. It currently takes 80 cents on the dollar, with Google taking 20 cents. With the purchase of ISH, Jeeves can probably demand 85. With Lycos too, it could quite easily get 90 cents. So, financially and strategically, Lycos would make sense for Jeeves.

Other possible candidates who might be interested in Lycos include InfoSpace, Primedia subsidiary About, Inc., or possibly even Google itself.

Lycos won't die -- it'll just change hands and be restructured. I guarantee it.

Cheers,
Doug

Lycos...

[k4_pacific]

Lycos is the eighth largest web portal, with over three hundred subscribers. Their site features time and weather, email, search, an "About Us" page and a Terms of Service page.

Definitely a bargain at $200 million.

Maybe someone could turn it into a sort of "living museum" so future generations can experience an actual late 20th century web portal. Little footnotes* indicating areas of historical interest could be added.

*Like this one. Footnotes are used to convey additional information without interrupting the flow of the text.

Re:Can't fool me...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Their adult search engine is useless. I am just not satisfied with semi-clothed women showing a nipple at most, so I searched on some of my favorite things:

-cream pie
-zoo
-gagging
-scat
-hentai
-tentacle rape

All of these gave the following answer:

We're sorry -- either we did not understand your query or we do not yet have matching results. We have served results for "sex."

And searching for "bukkake" gave me this:

You have entered a search term or phrase that may relate to unlawful content or material. Rouze only indexes and lists the best in legal adult content. Results have not been provided for your search term, but are for the search term "sex". Feel free to take advantage of these listings, revise your search, or check out the other features on Rouze. Now go get what you came here for!

This is useless. It's not a porn search engine. It's more like John Ashcroft.