Just received a reminder from Lycos that it is closing its webhosting services. Lycos used to be a popular search engine, and also provide webhosting. So where is Lycos going now? What is it planning? In addition to web hosting it has also ended its email services, and the portal/search engine is closed. Currently all that is on the Lycos homepage is a message saying “Dear LYCOS user and LYCOS visitor, as already communicated in the press and on our websites over the past few weeks, we stopped large parts of our portal business and portal service on the 15/02/2009. This concerns amongst other the services LYCOS Mail and LOVE@LYCOS.”
Interestingly the shopping page is still there, and prominently linked from the homepage. So maybe Lycos have decided to focus on the retail sector rather than web hosting? Maybe they plan to compete with the major online eCommerce sites, or build their own price comparison or social review site? Hopefully we will be able to reveal more soon. Below is a copy of the mail sent to all Lycos customers:
Unfortunately the time has come. We are closing our Webhosting services
forever. This means that on Monday, your website will unfortunately no longer be
available.On the 01.03.2009, LYCOS Europe will stop all its Webhosting services. Our
Callcentre will also be closing on this date.If you would still like your domain, website or server to continue, you must
transfer your domains and your content to another provider NOW!If you have already transferred your domain, website or server and receive
this information, please just ignore this email. Also all transfer queries that
have been received by the 28.02.2009 will be completely processed. If you have
already applied for your domain to be transferred, you can check by means of a
WHOIS query (http://whois.ws and http://www2.whois.eu/whois/GetDomainStatus.htm for an .eu domain) to
see whether your domain has already been transferred to your new provider.If you have not found a suitable provider, we recommend the special offer at
STRATO with which we have integrated a simplified transfer process for your
domains: http://strato.de/lycos/offer.html
