Former search engine giant Lycos, has revealed that they are rolling out a new, proprietary search engine in 2013 in an attempt to regain its status as a (the) leading search engine. The current Lycos search engine is powered by Yahoo but the new version will signal a return to its roots. Lycos CEO Rob Balazy told Next Web:
“In the coming year you will see us introduce a new proprietary search product. I don’t want to say too much about it as it’s still in the planning stage but we have a vision to merge the notion of a search-type activity with a curated content experience. We think the benefit to the consumer is huge. It removes the process of trial and error from clicking on search results and hitting ‘Back’ in the browser.”
Balazy explained how the new search engine intends to coexist with Google:
“I don’t think that we aspire to take on Google. Google’s big push has been to index the entire Web and be the definitive ‘Library of Congress for the Web’. We’ll focus more on the head terms, the search queries that are important and matter to people and really focus on the presentation layer, making the user experience really intuitive, really beautiful and take the same data-driving approach we’re doing with our homepage.”
Lycos was established in 1994. It began as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University’s main Pittsburgh campus and became one of the first profitable Internet businesses only four years later. It is now owned by Ybrant Digital, an internet marketing company based in Hyderabad, India. Other Lycos properties include Angelfire, Gamesville, Hotbot, Tripod.com, and Weather Zombie.
