There have been a lot of huge companies here in the UK shut down of late because of the economic crisis, such as Woolworths, MFI and others. In the technology world there havent been too many casualties so far. However that being said, it has been reported this morning that Lycos Europe will be closing its doors. A date still hasnt been confirmed but it is rumoured to be before the end of the year.
Lycos Europe, the portal and Web hosting service, said on Wednesday that it has concluded a strategic review process and will shut down operations and seek a sale of remaining assets. The company is separate from Lycos in the U.S., and was launched as a joint venture between Telefonica’s Terra and Bertelsmann.
“As a result of this strategic review process the Management Board and the Supervisory Board of Lycos came to the conclusion that the best available option of the company is to (i) strive for a sale of its domains, Danish portal and shopping activities and (ii) to discontinue the portal and webhosting activities,” the company said.
Lycos Europe will also return about $60 million to its shareholders.
What other technology companies are going to follow in the footsteps of Lycos? It tends to be old brands that are struggling to actually build a strong brand in this ever growing environment. My tip has to be on Napster being of the big boys to close its doors very soon!
WebHostingRating.com is a new host rating site where they are trying to build the biggest searchable web hosting directory featuring complete information on all web hosting providers, all their web hosting plans, promotional and discount coupons, and unedited reviews by real customers.
From what I can tell this service is built on a Wordpress platform which incorporates a review feature, allowing users to find the right provider and package to suite their needs.
Webhostingrating.com also have other sections on the site, such as a directory, web hosting awards and web hosting tutorials. The articles section is basically their blog in which they discuss everything web hosting. The site itself is brilliantly design and I can see this type of directory really taking off.
Since the site is relatively new, they have only review 4 key web hosting companies at present, but make sure you keep and eye out for more coming in the future. The hosting companies they have reviewed are all Unix hosting, but they have other categories that I’m sure will develop over time, such as Windows hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, collection hosting and managed hosting.
While offering some good reviews on trusted hosting companies, they are also writing their own corporate blog, which discusses everything from the world of web hosting. Currently, they seem to have approximately 100 articles in a variety of categories. These categories range from domain hosting to ecommerce to scripting. All the articles seem to be of good length and are very helpful. It would also have been nice to see them add a few pictures in the posts to mix up just the plain text. Normally, a site with the quality of articles they have would grow in the blogosphere, but add in the reviews section and you have a great site in the makings.
Anyways, make sure you head over to Webhostingrating.com and I’m sure they can help you find the right hosting package to meet your needs.
