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Lycos is an Internet search engine and web directory. It was born from a research project by Dr. Michael Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1994. The original Lycos search engine went on to be used in Carnegie Mellon's Informedia Digital Library project.
The name "Lycos" comes from Greek, lycos, meaning "wolf".
Shortly after the development of the Lycos Search Engine, the Lycos company was formed using venture capital and initial internal support from CMU. The CEO of the Lycos company was Bob Davis, a native of Boston who moved the headquarters of Lycos to Waltham, Massachusetts from Pittsburgh, and concentrated on building it into an advertising supported Web Portal, arguably at the expense of the Information Retrieval research on which the company was founded.
Lycos suffered under competition from Google, which concentrated on driving its business primarily on the basis of fast, effective web search, but remains a viable business as of early 2004.
The Lycos company was eventually purchased by Terra Networks, S.A., a subsidiary of the Spanish telephone company Telefónica, and renamed Terra Lycos. Terra Lycos has since dropped the Lycos moniker from its corporate identity and goes by the name Terra Networks, S.A.
Recently, Terra Networks, S.A. has contacted the investment bank Lehman Brothers about the possiblity of selling its Lycos Inc. subsidiary. As of August 2, 2004, Terra Networks, S.A. said it reached a definitive agreement with Seoul, South Korea-based Daum Communications Corporation, in which Daum will acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of Lycos Inc. for $95.4 million in cash. The transaction is subject to the expiration of the 30-day Hart Scott Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act on substantial mergers and acquisitions. Following conclusion of the transaction, Lycos Inc. will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Daum.
In November 2004, Lycos Europe introduced a Microsoft Windows and Mac OS screensaver program called Make love not spam which performs what is essentially a DDOS attack on the webservers of known spammers. This move, while potentially illegal, is an attempt by Lycos to get their customers more involved in the fight against spam. They host a website that provides stats on how much bandwidth the screensaver programme has 'stolen' from the spammers servers. In December 2004 Lycos Europe stopped distributing the program, at least temporarily, under heavy criticism from internet and security experts, and counterattacks believed to be from spammers. The distribution website was replaced with the words Stay Tuned. The company did not reply to requests for comments.
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