With Lycos, we have a former Internet-heavyweight that is stepping down for good. While being the biggest European Internet-portal during the last years of the former millennium and having had success with both the searchengines Fireball and Hotbot.de, it seems that, in recent years, Lycos’ lacking adaptability proved to be its own undoing. The restructuring-measures of the last few years did not help and it seems that there was no one who was willing to buy up Lycos as a whole. Now they are trying to sell off their lucrative stakes (United-Domains, Pangora and Jubii) and close down the rest (Portal, including lycos.de and webhosting). It is sad to see this happen, but besides Lycos IQ there was no new product-development that caught my attention in the last few years that could pay for their 700 employees.
