Hyderabad-based digital marketing solutions company Ybrant Digital has informed BSE (pdf) that it intends to consolidate all its media properties and rename the company to "Lycos Internet Limited", subject to approval from the Registrar of Companies and the company shareholders. The company mentions that this renaming was done to simplify the identity of group. Post the name change, Ybrant mentions that it will retain the original Lycos branding and the new Lycos will have 500 employees across various local offices in 24 countries across Asia, Europe, Latina America and the United States. The new entity will apparently work on bringing various "disparate, disconnected" entities like websites, apps and IoT devices to work together. It however noted that Ybrant's network business will continue to operate under the Ybrant Digital name. Lycos acquisition Note that Ybrant had acquired Lycos from Korea's Daum Communications for $36 million in an all-cash deal back in August 2010. Ybrant Digital CEO Suresh Reddy had then told Medianama that they're paying $20 million upfront and the remaining amount based on certain deliverables in the future. (Read: Why Ybrant Bought Lycos) Lycos was launched as a search engine back in the 90s, and now includes various groups of community and social sites, including the games portal gamesville.com, web hosting service tripod.com, website building service Angelfire and services like email, weather, news and games. It claims to currently offer 40 local Sites in 120 languages. It also claims to generate an average 12 - 15 million monthly unique visitors in the United States. The site recently introduced a comparison shopping section (in beta) offering products from various categories like electronics, books,…
