Breaking Web Marketing News
Lycos For Sale
April 28, 2004

The Spanish parent of Lycos is reportedly considering a sale of the Waltham-based Internet unit that it bought at the peak of the dot-com boom for $12.5 billion.

Lycos, which Barcelona-based Terra Networks bought in 2000 to become Terra Lycos, would likely fetch a much smaller price now. Terra is willing to consider selling for $200 million, according to a CNET News.com report.

Lycos lost $24 million last year, but is expected to make a profit this year, the report said. 'They're one of these ironic properties that continues to get tremendous amounts of traffic,'' said Matthew Berk, an Internet analyst in New York. ``But they still haven't figured out a way to make that pay off.''

Analysts said Lycos has struggled to compete with Yahoo in the Web portal business and Google in the Internet search business. But the experts also said Lycos' search engine remains popular, and it owns other key Internet businesses, such as the Matchmaker.com and Quote.com Web sites.

Lycos cut 22 percent of its staff in February while saying it would step up its focus on subscription-based services.