November 28, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) –
Lycos Europe will close its portal and cease web hosting activities, it was reported recently. The company will look for buyers for its component business sections, which alongside web hosting include domain registration, online shopping, and a portal designed for the Danish market. December 12, 2008 will see investors vote of management proposals for the future of the company, and it is expected 50 million euros will be returned to shareholders. Up to 700 people are expected to lose their jobs.
Lycos Europe is a joint venture between Telefonica, the “leading telecommunications operator in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world”, and Bertelsmann, a German transnational media corporation. The company paid Lycos Inc. in the USA $5.2 million to use the Lycos name.
The company was unable to compete with search giants Yahoo! and Google, and has since the beginning of 2008 looked for a buyer for the entire operation. The recent decision to close the company and sell off its component parts was a result of its inability to find a suitable buyer for the whole operation. A failure to reach an agreement with Tomorrow Focus (a German advertising network) and AOL for the purchase of Lycos Europe, led to Telefonica suing the company’s executive management for failure to consider appropriate avenues for selling the company.
