Giant of the pre-Google web to close

Posted on 28 Nov 2008 at 10:51

Internet portal Lycos Europe is to shut down after failing to find a buyer.

Its owners were initially said to be seeking around €200 million for the company, but with no concrete interest that price was halved. Still no one came forward.

Now the loss maker’s owners aims to return just €50 million to shareholders by selling off the few viable assets that it has.

In its late-90s heyday, Lycos Europe and its US counterpart, just Lycos, were the most visited destinations on the web. In 2000 heavily over-subscribed public offering valued the European company at €773 million.

But that was BG—before Google. Google revolutionised web search and portals such as Lycos and Yahoo have been playing catch-up ever since.

As new survey by the European Interactive Advertising Association shows, the web is now driven by the 25- to 34-year-old age group, who have no time for websites that have failed to move with the times.

“With the 25- to 34-year-olds, what you are seeing is a mixture of the fact that they are natural internet users, they know their way around the web,” said EIAA executive director Alison Fennah.

Clearly they don’t need sites such as Lycos to show them the way.

Author: Simon Aughton

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