In recent weeks we've seen similar moves by #4 portal company Terra Lycos. They've decided to do the opposite. While Excite@Home and Infospace zig, Terra Lycos zags, doing the opposite of everything the market tells them they should be saying and doing. While others divest themselves of consumer Internet properties, Terra Lycos acquires Raging Bull, and declares that it will use its $2.4 billion cash reserves to make other acquisitions, mostly in Europe (but not the UK, so they say). While others promise to "do less" (Excite@Home), to focus on being a niche portal (Go.com, before shutting down), or to shift their business model to focus on the corporate market (AltaVista), Terra Lycos says it will get bigger, do more, branch out, and continue to cater to that mass of undifferentiated consumers.

Will this brash approach make Lycos the lovable, sizzling, home-run-hitting darling of the wired economy, as many of its component parts once were, back in their infancies? Is it really possible to do the opposite and succeed? Will the Encyclopedia Britannica 2050 Edition write that Terra Lycos management were "brilliant contrarians," or "short, bald, unemployed and living with their parents"?

Given the steady stream of executives departing Terra Lycos, and the Lycos Europe's recent projection of a less-than-crisp timetable for profitability (sometime around 2003 or 2004), it seems as if the latter is the better bet. Then again, never bet against a big telecom company, even if its portal has lousy email and tired old search engines, and owns rinkydink stuff like Tripod.