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There is no disagreement on Yahoo being out of the game now. In a $4.8 billion deal, major portion of the company has been taken up by Verizon. The rebranded version of Yahoo is surprisingly named as Altaba. On the run, Yahoo failed to compete with Google on search.
When we look at Google, failing of Yahoo can be understood easily. Google provides best search results for people and it is impossible for any platform to take its place. Despite Yahoo ending up in the dead zone, Lycos has been working quietly along the way. In 1990’s Lycos was the pioneer of search that preceded Yahoo by one year and Google by four years. Although it never came close to the height of popularity of Google or Yahoo, but it remained pretty close to both companies.
Looking back at the history we see Lycos represented as Lycos the dog, a breed which has an excellent ability to search for low-res images of supermodels in 90s.
Partying in 1990:
Lycos in 1996 actually looked like this
At that time, Lycos had the same growth strategy that is being followed by Google today. It was aimed at doing more than just search ranging from content, gaming, web hosting, email etc. But now it looks like this
Using Lycos now as a search engine is not something really terrible. It is good for providing information regarding high-profile celebrities, Wikipedia pages, famous companies etc. Considering the fading position of the platform; Lycos is doing an impressive job. Each time the company traded hands, it ended up in a pile of cash. The revenues in 2009 were $24.74 million. It was then sold by a Korean firm Daum Communications to an Indian marketing firm Ybrant Digital for $30 million. Lycos is still working and is still earning but nobody known about it anymore.
Surprisingly Lycos has also entered in the gaming world. A fitness tracker and an NFC smart ring were launched by Lycos in 2015. There was also a smart band that was introduced by the company but not a single product received attention. From Google Play store, the Android version of the companion app only had 1,000 and 5,000 downloads. Lycos is not the only company the world has forgotten but is still around, Excite. Com and Ask.com are also operating despite being neglected by the audience.
Via: The Next Web
