Looks like troubled Lycos Europe is killing more than just Lycos Mail and Tripod. The company is also shuttering Jubii, a service that was never covered by TechCrunch, although we did mention them as a competitor to Zenbe when that company took the beta tag of its social communication platform.
Jubii was a former Danish search company acquired by Lycos Europe in 2000 which was ultimately relaunched for the U.S. market with a social software product that integrated chat, text messaging, file-sharing, storage, blogging, e-mail and mobile communications (Webware reviewed the service extensively). The name Jubii was chosen because Lycos Europe was barred from selling itself in the States using its own name (more information in this March 2007 article by the New York Times). Ironically, the last sentence of that article went something like this, quoting former CEO Christoph Mohn:
“Give us two or three years. You’ll see a lot different Lycos Europe than you see now.”
Well that’s true, but not in a good way.
According to the Wikipedia entry for Jubii, the service was put up for sale in September 2008, but the homepage now reads:
Dear User,
This service will remain available only until 15 February 2009. After this date, all accounts will be closed, and any stored content and access authorizations related to your e-mail account will be deleted in accordance with legal requirements. For this reason, we ask that you back up all important data from your Jubii e-mail account in the next few days and switch to another e-mail provider.
We regret this measure and would like to thank you for the trust you have placed in us.
Your Jubii Mail Team
One more for the deadpool, and it won’t be the last.
Update: the Danish version of Jubii changed hands to a private investor this month and will be kept alive.
Be aware that Lycos and Lycos Europe are not the same companies. Lycos Europe is the company who acquired Jubii and intends to close down its businesses.
Jubii.dk (the danish search portal) will continue on private hands according to this article: http://translat...=auto&tl=en
Hi Jonathan, made some changes to the post reflecting your comment and other comments below.
I have across the Lycos network (it was the 90s and tripod was all the rage go figure).
I’ve been getting tons of email, almost all their services are closing down. All of the email and hosting they provided across Lycos (nl, de, uk), Jubii, and a few others are closing down.
Jubii.com is closing but jubii.dk stays open with a new owner
http://twitter....atus/1128152817
It’s a sad way to go. I was never a fan of Jubii, in fact I was dreading the switch as the Jubii interface was dire. Though, in the last two months it was a bit better.
Back in the 90’s Lycos was what Google is today albeit with a lesser internet. I wonder in 2019 will we be saying the same thing about Google.
This is like flashback Sunday with all these Lycos posts.
Let’s get some news about Excite, too. Or maybe HotBot or Infoseek (now Go.com)… a little “where are they now?” profile for the also-rans of the 1997-2001 portal wars.
dude! That not cool! Aww… Lycos was kinda cool. A sad, sad fate, how depressing….
lycos…
Please note, the Lycos Mail and Tripod services you refer to pertain to Lycos Europe ONLY and have absolutely nothing to do with Lycos, Inc. operations based in the US. Lycos, Inc. (www.lycos.com) is a completely separate entitiy from Lycos Europe. Furthermore, at no time did Lycos, U.S. own nor operate Jubii. Most importatnt, both Lycos Tripod and Lycos Mail continue to be products and services offered by the Lycos Network in the U.S., with millions of members continuing to host and publish through Tripod, one of the original pioneers in web publishing and hosting services.
– Kathy O’Reilly, Director of PR, Lycos, Inc.
Next thing everyone will be up in arms at Geocities being closed down!
Geocities still exists?
For anyone looking for a quick and easy way to backup their Lycos email accounts (or Jubii, Tripod, Caramail and Multimania) we’ve setup a site to do this, here:
Lycosmailbackup.com
Good luck to all those Lycos users on the move!
Ifdnrg team
http://www.ifdnrg.com