Lycos still kicking, and apparently has plenty to offer

The Lycos search engine and Web portal is not only still alive and kicking but attracting new buyers.

Ybrant Digital, based in Hyderabad, India acquired the legendary site in a $36 million (USD) stock purchase deal from Daum, a popular South Korean Web portal providing free web-based email, messaging, forums, shopping and online advertising solutions. Daum purchased Lycos for $95.4 million in October 2004, a far cry lower than the $12.5 billion forked over by Spain’s Terra Networks in May 2000.

What does the acquisition-happy Indian digital advertising firm get?

According to Lycos, it still generates a respectable 12 to 15 million unique visitors a month in the U.S. and nearly 60 million uniques globally. Over the years Lycos has added established brands including Tripod, Angelfire, HotBot, Gamesville and WhoWhere to its network of products and services, which include: social networking, blogging, Web hosting, online games, email, domain names and search.

Lycos Cinema, a video-based social network platform and Webon, a publishing and site creation tool, are more recent technology developments. Angelfire (www.angelfire.com) has been providing free Web hosting and website creation tools since 1995 in the same online community fashion as GeoCities, which was shut down by Yahoo! in October 2009.

Suresh Reddy, Chairman and CEO, Ybrant Digital said: "The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world. Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant’s global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide. Coupled with our offerings for advertisers, we do present new products to our local users worldwide."

Ybrant (www.ybrantdigital.com) produces more than 20 billion advertising impressions a month and services clients/brands such as Cisco, Intel, Dell, Sony, Adidas and MTV from 20 countries worldwide.

Previous acquisitions of Ybrant Digital include: Max Interactive (Australia), Dream Ad (Argentina), VoloMP (Serbia), MediosOne (USA), AdDynamix (USA) and Oridian, based in Israel.