Lycos Europe was a pan-European network of websites, offering services including communication tools, online communities, web search,

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web ho ...

homepage A home page (or homepage) is the main web page of a website. Usually, the home page is located at the Root directory, root of the website's Domain name, domain or subdomain. For example, if the domain is example.com, the home page is likely l ...

building and

Internet access Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide ...

. It was an independent corporation, sharing no corporate structure with Lycos, Inc. (USA) other than the licensed use of their name in Europe, but Lycos Europe was formed as a joint-venture between

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and Telefonica, who owned Lycos Inc. through Terra Lycos. On 26 November 2008, Lycos Europe announced that it was to shut down and sell its remaining assets.

Make Love Not Spam

In November 2004, Lycos Europe introduced a

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and

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program called ''Make Love Not Spam''. It was introduced as both marketing for the then-new Lycos email service Spray Mail, and as a way for users to fight

spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

in a collective manner. The program worked using users' computers to perform a DDOS attack on the web servers of known spammers. The computers worked in the same way as a botnet except the users were aware of the software and were able to decide if they wished to be involved in the scheme. On the December 21, 2004 Lycos Europe stopped distributing the program whilst simultaneously 'turning off' the programs on computers that had downloaded it. The decision was made under heavy criticism from Internet and security experts. It is also believed Lycos was subject to large scale counterattacks believed to be from spammers in retaliation. The distribution website was replaced with the words "Stay Tuned".

The Winding up of Lycos Europe

In November 2008, Lycos Europe announced that shareholders had called for its liquidation. Over the following months, it sold as many of its assets as possible and liquidated. Sold assets included the sale of the Danish portal Jubii, the Lycos Chat (which at the time was both the Lycos &

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Chat in Europe) was transferred to a new operator on March 9, 2009, and for a short while rebranded as the Noesis Chat. The Lycos Chat now forms part of Lycos, Inc. (USA) collection of sites, Love@Lycos was sold to a Swedish company. Lycos Europe sold further businesses: the news search Paperball was taken over by Paperball GmbH, Munich. The search engine Fireball now belongs to Ambrosia AG, Zug (Switzerland). Trademark and domains of the French Email-Service Caramail were taken over by United Internet AG, Montabaur. Conversis hosting GmbH continues the free hosting service MultiMania. Since liquidation, Lycos Inc withdrew the right for Lycos Europe to use their name and therefore, Lycos Europe are still partially trading under the name Jubii Europe.

References

External links

Lycos UK

Lycos, Inc. (USA)

Lycos Chat (UK)
{{Coord, 51.9061, N, 8.3875, E, source:wikidata, display=title Former joint ventures Companies based in the London Borough of Merton fi:Makelovenotspam.com