Back when Internet access exploded in the 1990s, Lycos was one of the most popular search engines and was competing against the likes of Yahoo and others. When Google came on the scene, all the other search engine solutions became less popular. However, Lycos, as a website, still exists today and still offers search engine results powered by Yahoo (which itself uses an engine based on Microsoft's Bing technology).
That will reportedly change in 2013, according to a story posted on TheNextWeb.com. Company CEO Rob Balazy states:
In the coming year you will see us introduce a new proprietary search product. I don’t want to say too much about it as it’s still in the planning stage but we have a vision to merge the notion of a search-type activity with a curated content experience.
Google does something like what Balazy describes with its Knowledge Graph database and Bing has been adding similar information to its search results with its snapshot feature. However, Balazy says Lycos' approach will be different, saying:
We’ll focus more on the head terms, the search queries that are important and matter to people and really focus on the presentation layer, making the user experience really intuitive, really beautiful and take the same data-driving approach we’re doing with our homepage.
Currently, Lycos.com is an old fashioned web portal, although the company is also branching out and releasing iOS games such as the puzzle game Evnicible. Its website creator business Tripod is also still live after 15 years. However, Lycos, which was bought in 2010 by India-based Ybrant Digital, has yet to reveal any specifics about its current revenues or the number of visitors it now has on the site.
Source: TheNextWeb | Image via Lycos
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