So I am cleaning out the inbox, and I get lots of press releases in my email from Lycos. Normally I ignore them, but this last one seemed kinda funny to me (but that might be because I am sorta tired).

LYCOS CELEBRATES 10TH YEAR WITH NEW CONTENT RICH SITE
DESIGNED TO RE-ENGAGE LYCOS USERS

International Expansion, Cutting Edge Products and Services,
Gets Lycos Back in the Game

So you are admitting that your users were once dis-engaged? and that you were out of the game?

a couple boring Tripod features and marketing at the military are going to save you. hmm...

You know a general purpose internet portal is in a pretty sad state when they have to rely on military partnerships as their promotion vehicles and outline those as the important parts of their press releases:

Last month, to coincide with the U.S. Army’s 230th birthday, Lycos launched Tripod for Troops (http://troops.tripod.com), designed to help soldiers feel one step closer to home and to serve as a destination where soldiers returning from war can continue to tell their stories. With Tripod for Troops, military families have access to military-themed blog and photo album templates to create online journals and post photos from digital cameras and camera phones.

This level of desperation goes to show how much traffic has consolidated at the top few search properties and why most smaller engines are usually not worth the time or effort.