Update: Lycos have responded and confirmed that Tripod is not shutting down and all free and paid member sites are just fine. Lycos have reached out to TechCrunch directly to amend the incorrect report.
A couple of months back Neowin reported that Lycos Europe were shutting down their web hosting company and selling it on to Strato. Today it has been revealed that Tripod and Lycos Mail are going to be shut down.
Lycos mail has had its problems in recent years trying to attract users to their service but in 2006 they redesigned their site in the hope that it could win them over. Latest figures show that only half a million users are using it regularly which when you look at some of the top providers like Yahoo, Live and Google, Lycos is a long way behind. Tripod on the other hand is a service that has been around for over 15 years and in 1998 was bought by Lycos for around $50m. It has been stable in the free web hosting market for a few years but just like the mail service the users have dwindled over the years so shutting it down is the easiest option.
At the time of writing this article no solution has been found for the mail users or tripod system but the chances of that happening are pretty slim. This is the email that was sent out to the users of the mail service.
Dear User,
We regret to inform you that our parent company has decided to discontinue all unprofitable activities.
One of the activities that will be discontinued is our E-mail business division. For this reason, we are hereby terminating your account as of 15 February 2009. Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed to do so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service.
Prior to this date, you may continue to log in to your e-mail account and receive and send mail as usual. After this date, however, we will close your account and delete all content and access authorizations stored with Lycos in relation to your e-mail account, in accordance with legal requirements.
You will then no longer be able to receive or send e-mail under your e-mail address. The contents of your mailbox will also no longer be accessible. For this reason, we ask that you back up all important data from your Lycos e-mail account in the next few days and switch to another e-mail provider.
Should you still be entitled to services for any additional paid options, we will of course reimburse the balance to the bank account you provided.
We regret this measure and would like to thank you for the trust you have placed in us.
Kind regards,
Your LYCOS Mail Team