June 4, 2003

Infoseek Japan and Lycos Japan have decided to merge their portals into one on the 1st of September this year. The main reason is apparently to get a stronger position vis-a-vis the Japanese version of Yahoo!, which is doing very well at the moment.

Services that are now offered by the Lycos portal will be transferred to the Infoseek site. Both sites are owned by Rakuten Inc., Japan's biggest Internet shopping mall operator.

Lycos is powered by AlltheWeb in most countries. In Japan, however, the search engine used has been Wisenut, owned by the LookSmart company. Wisenut is now loosing its foothold in Japan, as the new unified portal will be powered by Infoseek.

Search engine old timers will remember the American Infoseek, and the Japanese version is indeed an offshoot of that search engine. However, today it is purely a Japanese endeavor.

Sources: The Japan Times and Webmaster World

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