Another Lycos Europe earnings update, another terrible showing. The once-mighty portal, a separate company from Lycos US, swung to a big €9.8 million loss in the half-year to June, from a €48.7 million profit a year ago, after revenues collapsed from €41.2 million to €33.3 million. Again, we have the now-familiar pledge the company “will mainly focus on the product offensive in order to stabilise the traffic”, and, like most the of recent updates, the focus is on Lycos iQ - a clone of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Answers, which itself is pretty dominant on Lycos’ European turf - as well as behavioural advertising and German shopping guide Decido.

One wonders whether that portal has a listing for Lycos, which has been for sale since April with no sign of any buyer yet. The company says “progress is being” and a sale is expected in the next five months. On the acquisition, the company last week told me: “For the moment, there are no updates to be made.” Release & Financials.

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