Lycos Acquired By Ybrant Digital For $36 Million

Lycos Inc., one of the early Internet companies that soared into the stratasphere before falling to the earth, has been acquired by an Indian company for $36 million. Lycos once commanded a valuation of $12.5 billion before Internet companies began unraveling more than a decade ago.

Currently owned by South Korea's Daum Communications, the Boston-based Lycos is slated to be acquired by Ybrant Digital of India for $36 million in cash.

"Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant's global network with what Lycos has to ofer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide," said Suresh Reddy, Ybant's chairman and CEO, in a statement. "The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world."

Lycos has a search engine and an email services as well as web tools and has offered some telecommunications services in recent years. Its tools include features for video viewing and sharing, social networking, blogging, web publishing and web hosting. Daum has said Lycos has more than 12 million unique monthly visitors.

Daum reorganized Lycos a few months ago, noting that it was profitable. Daum, however, said it wanted to concentrate its resources in the South Korean market and put Lycos up for sale.

With some $70 million in yearly revenue, Ybrant plans to add Lycos to its portfolio of offerings which range from marketing rights to Microsoft products in South America to Yahoo products in Ukraine. Ybrant also offers online advertising.

Lycos once flew close to the Internet sun collecting some $12.5 billion from Spain Terra Networks SA, but promptly crashed to earth along with other over-inflated Internet companies. Daum acquired Lycos from Terra Networks in 2004 for $95 million.

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