Kevin Kelly, Wired's past in-house futurist, has given an interview in which he makes the seemingly ludicrous claim that Wired could have been Google. The New York Observer has a giggle at Kelly's statement that "from the very beginning, Wired believed in 'search.'... I believe that had Wired not been divided and sold that we might have actually arrived at the same place that Google had." But was Kelly really that far off? Watch the whole video and see

TechCrunch reports that CondeNet, the online arm of Condé Nast and the parent of Wired.com, has bought Ars Technica, a rival technology news site. But if the latest issue of Wired is any indication, that's not the only tech property that's moved to CondeNet recently. On page 24, Wired's June issue announces a new version of Webmonkey, a defunct site for Web developers, under a list of Wired.com features:

Search engine Lycos isn't gone, but it is forgotten. It vanished from our collective consciousness not long after making hyped acquisitions of companies like Tripod, Angelfire, and Wired Digital. Cofounder Bob Davis was there to watch it go. Now he's a venture capitalist. The bad news? As the M&A market slows to 2003 levels, Davis tells BoomTown we've already entered the second recession of his career. The good news? It's not going to be nearly so bad as last time. "Today, entrepreneurs and surely VCs are saying, there has to be some sense of metrics, there has to be something."

The argument goes that IAC chairman Barry Diller is battling with John Malone over control of the company because he's never been the visionary he claims to be. Odd. He certainly seemed like one back in 1999. That's when he appeared on Charlie Rose to explain why his company, then called USA Networks, tried to acquire Lycos for $20 billion. Check out the clip. Nine years ago, Diller nailed the Internet. Though maybe not the Lycos deal.

"Ask.com has reached an agreement to provide search and sponsored listings for Lycos, the fifth most popular U.S. Web portal, the companies said on Wednesday."
— Reuters, November 1

Wired News staffers suffered for years under the reign of Lycos before Cond Nast bought them this summer and reunited them with Wired Magazine (whose offices were, at the time of purchase, across the hall). Michael Calore of Wired News says:

A Wired News staffer, thankful that Condé Nast has rescued the company from Lycos, sends a hilariously telling schwag shot.

The classic web-dev resource Webmonkey taught me how to build my first homepage. Now, after ten years, Lycos will shutter the site and all its content. Webmonkey's editor sent the following message to the site's contributors, warning them to stop all work on Webmonkey and rescue their published pieces before Lycos deletes them. This message was leaked to Valleywag.

The publisher of Wired Magazine bought long-lost Wired News from Lycos, eight years after the two Wireds got split up. But what happens now?

Condé Nast, owners of Wired Magazine, just bought Wired News from Lycos. All sides are cheering because Wired finally rescued its long-lost brother. Eight years ago, Wired Ventures couldn't afford to run independently. The firm had to sell its print division to Condé Nast and its digital division to Lycos. Since then, the Wired brand has been fractured.