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Lycos Sold To South Korean Company

Posted by timothy on from the profit-and-loss dept.

maggeth writes "Terra Networks has finally decided to dump its struggling web portal, Lycos, to the South Korean-based Daum Communications Corp. Terra bought Lycos for $12.5 billion and they managed to sell if for $105 million. More details at the story on eWeek."

17 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Now you know why the bubble burst by bigberk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If someone actually thought that Lycos was worth $12.5 billion, you have a pretty good idea how messed up people were in the 90s, and why the bubble burst. A bunch of 'companies' creating no products, acting as nothing more than advertising and marketing information hubs, fooled millions of investors. Bravo, you sirs were truly kings.

    1. Re:Now you know why the bubble burst by weiyuent · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If someone actually thought that Lycos was worth $12.5 billion, you have a pretty good idea how messed up people were in the 90s, and why the bubble burst.

      Thing is though, everything else was massively inflated too. Terra Networks bought Lycos in 2000, in an all stock deal. So really, the $12.5 billion is just paper value. Who knows how much hard cash was actually burned -- not insubstantial but certainly much less than $12 billion.

    2. Re:Now you know why the bubble burst by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The article doesn't go into details, but I highly doubt that $12.5B of real money was involved. I would imagine that the deal was done with the dot.com version of Monopoly(tm) money, swapping inflated stock. The stock transferred by the companies might have had an astronomical "market value", but if they had actually tried to sell the stock on the open market to convert it to cash, the value would have nosedived. All of this "market value" would have been generated by a handful of fools buying a tiny fraction of the total stock at outrageous prices; the $billions may never have existed in any real form.

      Thus, the main value of such stock is to trade for other equally inflated stock, just like the main value of a $500 Monopoly bill is for buying little fake plastic hotels.

  2. What a Bargain by wayward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just took a look at the Lycos website. Loud ads AND search functionality for a mere $105 million? What a steal!

  3. So... by lingqi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lycos owns Wired and Webmonkey and a slew of other actually really cool stuff right...
    I even vaguely remember monster.com being part of their network.

    Lycos portal I don't care, what happens to these?

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  4. Nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    They weren't sold

  5. It's okay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Slashdot 503's will probably be fixed someday, and then you'll feel better.

  6. New variant of an old joke. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    How do you make a small fortune out of the dot com boom?

    Start with a large one.

  7. Re:Worth it? by TeraCo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well.. my guess is 11.895 billion.

    --
    Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
  8. I should have been a stock broker... by isd_glory · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hm... $12.5 billion can buy about 925 million 12-packs of bottled Guinness Draught. At the 5 cent per bottle recycling rate in NY state, that would net about $555 million.

    The moral of the story: beer is always a safer investment than struggling dotcoms.

  9. Not too bad a deal by r_j_prahad · · Score: 4, Funny

    Terra bought Lycos for $12.5 billion and they managed to sell if for $105 million.

    Not so bad a deal that they can't make up for it in volume....

  10. I remember... by Cyno01 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Back in middle school, using lycos picture search for porn. Bout the only thing its ever been good for...

    --
    "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
  11. Re:Terra is that strong? by lothar97 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I imagine most of the "loss" was in intangible assets, such as brandnames, goodwill, etc. To buy Lycos, Inc., Terra just printed $12.5 billion in stock certificates (see this article), which made the then stockholders of Lycos (valued in 2000 at $70ish per share) significantly happy. Terra is owned by Telifonica, which is the national phone company of Spain.

    --

  12. The Investors Creed by Velcroman98 · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's supposed to be buy low sell high, did they forget?

    --
    Kevin
    Irrational Diversions
  13. nope - this is a different CEO by muyuubyou · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Terra belongs to Telefónica (biggest telecom in Spain, coming from a national monopoly). In year 2000 the CEO was Villalonga (close friends with ex-PM Aznar) whose strategy was expanding through the Americas, thus buying Lycos made sense. Villalonga was expelled by political pressure, since in Spain, american practices like stock options are considered bribery and corruption.

    The new CEO (who has devalued the company substantially) had a completely different approach and Lycos no longer makes sense in the company.

  14. Re:I sure hope they bought this domain too. by Achoi77 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know it's meant to be a joke, but Koreans can pronounce their L's fine. Actually, they can have more trouble pronouncing R's. Which means that Lycos would be preferred over Rycos. Don't confuse Japanese with Korean.

  15. Re:So is this method not working? by nomadic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Considering someone sold it for 12 billion, I can assure you that somewhere a very nice profit was made.