Tripod brings gratis model to Europe

Tripod is currently number two in the free web community charts, playing second to Geocities. Both offer customers free web space and email addresses in return for obligatory advertising on the web pages.

Now, Lycos, which in addition to Tripod owns Angelfire, hotbot and the Lycos search engine, is migrating the Tripod brand to Europe with sites localised to different countries, to launch on Thursday. According to a spokesperson, Lycos is "trying really hard" to be a portal site, sinking £15 million into the project. One specific aim, the company said, is to involve itself in e-commerce and the Euro.