An interesting but ultimately minor move from Lycos Europe, the independent company (not part of Lycos USA….partly owned by Bertelsmann of Germany and Telefonica of Spain). It cannot enter U.S. using its own once-famous name, as Lycos U.S. is here, and now owned by Korean portal company Daum. So it is using the brand and services of Jubii, its Danish search and community business, and will launch here in a month or so, reports IHT.
The service combines search, e-mail, chat, photo and file storage, phone texting, blogging, Internet phoning and other Web 2.0 type service. Lycos U.S. here partly positions itself similarly, so will be interesting to see how that plays out. Lycos Europe claims 31 million unique users on sites it owns as well as partner sites; about half of its users are in Britain, Germany and France, with the rest scattered around the world.
Interestingly, Lycos Europe has had a single CEO throughout its 10-year history, rare for an online consumer service…Christoph Mohn is the CEO and part of the family that runs Bertelsmann, the media giant that owns Random House, Gruner + Jahr, RTL and part of Lycos Europe. His parents, Liz and Reinhard Mohn, are the driving forces on the company’s supervisory board, which Christoph Mohn just joined last month.
There is a line of thought that Bertelsmann needs the company for its eventual Internet strategy, and this would possibly have implications in U.S. as well.