Lycos, the ill-fated operator of a search engine, Web portal and whatnot originally established in 1994 (!) has a new owner – once again.
India-based digital marketing solutions company Ybrant Digital has purchased Lycos from Korean Internet company Daum for a reported $36 million in a stock purchase agreement.
Daum bought Lycos for $95.4 million in cash in August 2004, a fraction of what its then-owner had paid for the site four years earlier (Lycos was acquired by Terra Networks, the internet arm of Spanish telecom giant Telefónica, for $5.4 billion in May 2000).
Lycos claims its network, which includes the eponymous search engine but also products and services with familiar names such as Tripod, Angelfire, Gamesville and WhoWhere for social networking, ecommerce, video viewing and sharing, gaming, blogging and website hosting, consistently attracts 12 to 15 million monthly unique visitors in the United States, on average.
The company boasts that the network is also a top 25 Internet destination worldwide, reaching nearly 60 million unique visitors globally.
(Via @ScepticGeek)
