Lycos Drops Overture Amid Dispute

[Blue_Fin]

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Terra Lycos has dropped Overture's listings across its U.S. Web pages after a disagreement over a contract the companies signed just three months ago.

MarketWatch [marketwatch.com]

[heini]

...and has taken Google onboard instead, following suit after T-Online did the same earlier this autumn.
Portals see Y! as more of a competition as Google - not sure if this is not rather shortsighted.

[siliconvalley.com...]

[NFFC]

Dating site falls out with dating site, failed dating site purchaser to fill the void.

[martinibuster]

This can only be a disturbing week for Overture.

First Overture's longtime Chief Technology Officer abandoned ship for MSN. Their Gator division opted for a name changes and lawsuits in an effort to rehabilitate their image, and now Lycos is accusing Overture of having competitor cooties.

A disturbing trend.

[Shak]

I doubt Overture are worried about a tier 2 engine like Lycos dropping them.

meeeooowwwww

Shak

[johnnydequino]

I agree. When is the last time anyone ever did a search on lycos? Lycos is a junkyard anyway.

[martinibuster]

From Lycos' website [terralycos.com]

Terra Lycos' network of Web sites includes Terra in 18 countries, Lycos in 22 countries, Angelfire.com, Atrea.com, Azeler.es, Educaterra.com, Gamesville.com, HotBot.com, Ifigenia.com, Invertia.com, Lycos Zone, Maptel.com, Matchmaker.com, Quote.com, RagingBull.com, Rumbo.com, Tripod.com, Uno-e.com and Wired News (Wired.com), among others.

Also, ComScore media metrix [biz.yahoo.com] positions Lycos websites as the sixth most visited website, with Ask Jeeves a distant 25th.

[johnnydequino]

Proof is in the pudding - my clicks did not notice Lycos was gone. In fact, I had even more clicks this monday then last monday. Anyone else?

[heini]

>clicks

the two accounts combined are worth about $100 million in sales and $20 million in net after-traffic costs to Yahoo

referring to Lycos US and Europe.
So it's not that much of a deal.
I wouldn't be surprised if Lycos with all their properties would make more with Content ads than with PPC on serps.

[Eric_Lander]

market watch [marketwatch.com]

Terra Lycos (TRLY: news, chart, profile), an Internet access and portal operator formed in October 2000 when Terra Network bought Lycos, is attempting to resolve the matter in court, a representative of Yahoo-owned Overture told CBS MarketWatch.

"We understand a lawsuit has been filed by Lycos, but we haven't yet been served," said Jennifer Stephens, a spokeswoman at the Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) unit. "As a result, Lycos has removed Overture's listings from its site. We do not believe that Lycos has the right to take down our listings, and we're currently evaluating our options."

Terra Lycos, controlled by Telefonica, said it would not comment on filing a lawsuit but confirmed that it began integrating Google's advertisements on its U.S. properties last week.

Is this posted elsewhere? I may have missed this, but its big in my mind now...

[Chndru]

Relations between both companies, however, appear to have been unraveling in recent months. On Sept. 30, Terra Lycos announced that it had struck a deal with Google's advertising network to provide contextual advertising on Terra Lycos' platform. Contextual advertising integrates advertisements within editorial pages and not on search-result pages. The search-result pages had been committed to Overture's advertising network, until now.

A few threads on this one.
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[rise2it]

With all of these companies constantly jumping in and out of bed with each other, there's bound to be some (sniff sniff) hurt feelings.

[heini]

Here's some background info on what Terra Lycos amounts to. It still is one of the web heavyweights, make no mistake:

with a total of 4.6 million paying access, communication and portal services customers

the access business accounted for 41% of Terra Lycos
revenues; advertising and e-commerce accounted for 25%; value-added
communication, portal and content services accounted for 23%; and the
remaining 11% of revenues came from corporate & SME services and other
revenues.

PressRelease [prnewswire.com]

[Tor]

Terra Lycos still has one of the strongest cash positions in the sector, allowing it to fund its operations and explore new business opportunities with the aim of achieving profitable growth. The Company closed September 2003 with 1.62 billion euros in cash.

Their cash position is really impressive and gives the company a strong finacial leverage. With nearly 1.9 billion USD in cash their finacial backbone seems healty enough for future expansion.

[dannysullivan]

First Overture's longtime Chief Technology Officer abandoned ship for MSN. Their Gator division opted for a name changes and lawsuits in an effort to rehabilitate their image

Gator, or the former Gator, is a completely separate company from Overture. Overture simply has a distribution deal with it.

[Tropical Island]

First Overture's longtime Chief Technology Officer abandoned ship for MSN.

Maybe this is the guy responsible for all the screwups at Over. Perhaps his "abandoning ship" was not entirely voluntary. Maybe he'll do an equal job with MSN :).

[Brett_Tabke]

> I doubt Overture are worried

Looks like it is worth watching to me. The contract sounds rather air tight. The yahoo purchase appears to O in direct conflict with its Lycos contract.

`Overture will inevitably disclose Lycos' confidential and trade secret information to Yahoo!, and indeed, on information and belief, Overture has already done so.''

[heini]

>Overture will inevitably disclose Lycos' confidential and trade secret information to Yahoo!

You gotta wonder why MSN doesn't feel threatened to leak "trade secrets" to Y!.

[WebStart]

I don't know if Lycos is a money maker or not, but I am listed (without paying) number 2 or 3 for most keywords that matter to me, and I rarely get a visitor from Lycos. Sometimes I appear in the paid positions from OV for those same terms. Makes no difference, the traffic from Lycos is close to nill.