Lycos

Lycos is a web search engine and web portal that began as a research project at Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. The name, derived from the wolf spider family Lycosidae, reflects its early focus on crawling the web. The project was led by Michael Loren Mauldin and grew into Lycos, Inc., founded to commercialize the technology. During the late 1990s, Lycos rose to prominence as one of the leading portals, offering search alongside services such as email, news, and web hosting. It became known for products like Angelfire and Tripod, free hosting platforms acquired by Lycos that helped expand its reach.

In 2000, Terra Networks—part of the Telefónica group—acquired Lycos in a high-profile deal, marking one of the era's largest internet acquisitions. Following the purchase, Lycos operated as part of Terra's global portal network, with a focus on display advertising and licensing its search technology to partners. Over the subsequent years, competition from Google and changes in online advertising reduced Lycos's market share, though the brand persisted with a mix of portals, hosting services, and search functionality.

Today, Lycos exists as a legacy web brand used by various corporate entities for portal and content services. While it no longer dominates the search landscape, Lycos remains part of internet history as an early, influential web portal and crawler-based search project.