14 DAY TRIAL // Indian online marketing company Ybrant Digital bought Lycos, a vestige of the dot com era, for the bargain price of $36 million. Lycos, which was once valued at several billion dollars, still has a decent worldwide audience of several tens of millions of visitors.
“Brand Lycos needs no introduction, we are excited to bring in the Lycos properties into our fold,” Suresh Reddy, Chairman and CEO of Ybrant Digital, said. “The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world."
Lycos was founded in 1994 and went public two years later. As many of the companies of its day it was part web portal, part search engine and was one of the first to go for an advertising supported revenue model.
The company went from strength to strength and became the most visited site on the planet in 1999. It was sold not long after to Spanish telecom giant Terra Networks for $12.5 billion in stock.
After the dot come bubble burst, the company, which still wasn't profitable, began to lose its value. It was later sold to the South Korean Daum Communications for $95 million. Daum says it has now offloaded Lycos so it could focus on its own search efforts.
Lycos says it still attracts about 12 million to 15 million monthly visitors in the US and about 60 million worldwide. That's enough to put it in the top 100 websites in the world. The company also turned a profit last year.
"Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant’s global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide. Coupled with our offerings for advertisers, we do present new products to our local users worldwide,” the CEO of Ybrant explained the reasons behind the acquisition.