It is sad to read that Lycos Europe is calling it a day after 14 years in existence. From its birth as one of the first ever search engines in 1994, Lycos grew to become the most visited web portal in the world with a presence in 40 countries. There is no word on Lycos’ North American arm but one look at the site this afternoon (which incidentally crashed my computer!) and it’s not hard to see why the European site is closing down. The site is not the most inspiring portal in the world and seems to have changed little over the years. With many portals adopting the social media, DIY aspect of the internet Lycos was very lacking in this department.
Historically Lycos was a good site for advertising [in the early days] with good volumes and the first site to offer keyword targeted text link adverts, long before the likes of Google or Goto.com were offering it. However, as the year’s progressed their volumes dropped month on month to the point it was not a viable advertising platform.
The saddest aspect of all of this, however, is that a quick search on Google News and the story of Lycos Europe’s demise only seems to have warranted 5 news articles. For a company that was once acquired for $5.4 billion at the height of the Internet boom this is a sad end. Here’s hoping that the Lycos company can keep going in the US and one of the founders of the commercial Internet revolution isn’t forgotten.
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