how to loose 12 billion?

Filed in archive Venture Capital on August 3, 2004

Loosing 12 billion is always easier than winning, but this story is rather harsh:

"By 2000, it was clear that Lycos was an also ran in the search and
portal arena, but Terra, the big Spanish internet company, still paid a
cool $12.5 billion for the company. A few months later, Lycos ditched their own search technology in favor of FAST's (now owned by Yahoo). Still, with the sudden focus
on search and portals again, you would think the site might be worth
something. Apparently not very much. The company has sold off Lycos for $95 million to $115 million. That's quite a loss. The new owner isn't named but is rumored to be a South Korean company.