Lycos Europe Calling It Quits

Web portal and hosting provider Lycos Europe is throwing in the towel.

The company has announced its intent to shut down its portal, hosting, and shopping businesses and try to sell off its domain names. The move still has to be approved by shareholders at the upcoming December 12 meeting. If approved, Lycos Europe would distribute €50 million to shareholders — which would amount to €0.1605 per share. (Full explanation here, in PDF format.)

Lycos Europe is separate from the American Lycos site, though both have largely fallen to the wayside in recent years. Last month, Lycos Europe revealed its revenue had dropped 20 percent, resulting in a net loss of €17.1 million, or US$22.1 million. The company had been working on finding a buyer for some time now, and its CEO had at one time even suggested AOL was ready to make a bid. That suggestion, evidently, never came to fruition.

Is it just me, or does this whole thing remind you of a certain other once-dominant Web company?