Lycos To Relaunch Search Services In Europe, For Whatever Reason

Remember Lycos? Well, believe it or not, they’re not dead yet. In fact, the search engine / web portal has just announced that it has regained the rights to use the trademarked brand names “Lycos” and “Hotbot” within the European territory. In case that confuses you: Lycos Europe had an exclusive license to use those terms within Europe under an agreement dating back to 1997 when the company was formed as part of a joint venture and started up European operations independently from Lycos.

In a statement Jungwook Lim, CEO of Lycos (which today is actually a subsidiary of Korean Internet giant Daum Communications), said: “Lycos continues to have a loyal user base and we expect this consolidation to help revitalize and strengthen our search businesses within Europe.” That made me scratch my head a bit, because I’ve been living and working in Europe for a long time and I don’t know a living soul that’s still “loyal” to anything remotely Lycos.

Chuckle along with this additional statement from Edward Noel, General Manager of Search and Business Development for Lycos, too:

“Over the next several weeks Lycos will be re-launching the provision of search services within the European territory. Locally targeted content verticals will gradually be rolled out and we will be taking steps to enhance our users’ search experience.”

If I read that correctly, it seems Lycos is not giving up on Europe just yet. Too bad European users gave up on them long ago.