Tucows

Type:	Public
Industry:	Internet, Registrar
Founded:	Flint, Michigan, USA (1993)
Founder(s):	Scott Swedorski Colin Campbell
Headquarters:	96 Mowat Avenue, Toronto, ON M6K 3M1
Country:	Canada
Businesses:	OpenSRS, ISPBilling.com, Butterscotch.com, YummyNames, Hover, Ting
Employees:	~200 (2010)
Revenue:	$97 million (2011)
Website:	TucowsInc.com
Twitter:	@tucows
Key People
Elliot Noss, President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Cooperman, Chief Financial Officer Adam Eisner Carla Goertz, Vice President, Human Resources David Woroch, Vice President, Sales Ken Schafer, Vice President, Marketing and Product Management Ross Rader, General Manager of Hover

Tucows, an acronym for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software, is best known for its popular website directory of shareware, freeware, and demo software packages available for download.

New gTLDs

Tucows applied for 4 gTLDs under ICANN's New gTLD Program using the subsidiary Tucows TLDs Inc. .online, .media, and .marketing applications by Tucows have all been withdrawn, while .group has passed the Initial Evaluation.

History

• 1993 - Tucows began in Flint, Michigan. It was originally started by Scott Swedorski as a website to offer software on a freeware or shareware basis.

• 1995 - Tucows is aquired by Toronto-based ISP Internet Direct.

• 1999 - Tucows is accredited by ICANN as a domain name registrar.

• 2000 - Tucows launches an OpenSRS platform and began accepting domain name registrations from ISPs and web hosting companies.

• 2001 - Tucows merges with Infonautics, Inc., an internet information services company.

• 2006 - Tucows acquires NetIdentity. At the time, NetIdentity owned 68% of all US and European surname domain names.

• 2007 - Tucows acquires ItsYourDomain.com, a privately held ICANN-accredited wholesale registrar offering domain services through a network of over 2,500 affiliates with over 700,000 domains under management.

• 2008 - Tucows launches Hover.com. Tucows discontinues ItsYourDomain.com, NetIdentity, and DomainDirect, merges them, and forms Hover.

• 2008 - Tucows announces the launch of Butterscotch.com, an online video site. However, the site now resolves to a page about Tucows and its services.

• 2012 - Tucows launches a new mobile carrier, Ting.

• 2017 - Tucows acquires Enom from Rightside for $83.5 million, and with capital adjustments, resulting in a net cash closing of $76.7 million. Enom remains a distribution partner for Rightside's new gTLDs.

• 2021 - purchases Uniregistry's registry platform service, in significant part for its technical team. This asset agreement is effective as of October 1, 2021.

Products and Services offered by Tucows

Tucows earned a name early on for being the first website to provide "freeware" and "shareware" software. They currently host more than 40,000 titles that are proven virus- and spyware-free through an international network of partner sites. These partner sites ensure that software downloads are fast, local, and secure.

Apart from Tucows.com, Tucows also owns many other sites:

• OpenSRS.com: A platform for resellers. OpenSRS manages over ten million domain names, and millions of mailboxes for a network of over 10,000 web hosts, ISPs, and other resellers around the world.
• ISPBilling.com: Platypus Billing System is specifically designed for ISP, WISP and Web Hosting business.
• Butterscotch.com: An online video network with video tutorials to explain internet technology.
• YummyNames.com: YummyNames oversees the tens of thousands of domain names owned by Tucows. YummyNames offers domain name consulting services specifically designed for marketers, along with the sales and leasing of premium domains from the Tucows portfolio through the YummyNames website.
• Hover.com: Tucows provides domain names, email and other services through an extensive reseller network called OpenSRS. They sell these services directly to consumers and small businesses through a retail group known as Hover.

Ting

In February 2012, Tucows launched a new mobile carrier, Ting. The service is aimed at building a variable service around the customer's needs; for example, should a customer use minutes over or under the parameters of his or her current plan, he or she can expect to be billed at a plan that corresponds to usage rather than facing over-usage fees or paying for more data and minutes than used.

Revenue

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Tucows posted a revenue of $26.4 million, which represented the 7th consecutive quarter of record revenue and brought annual revenue for 2011 to $97 million. Its domain portfolio reseller, YummyNames, performed particularly well and saw its revenue up 24% over one year.

In January 2012, Tucows announced that it would purchase a total of 7,569,952 shares of its Common Stock at $0.77 per share. The total purchase price of the stock is $5,828,863. The company expects to own approximately 46,047,337 shares issued and outstanding once the purchase transaction is completed.

Other

In protest of SOPA and PIPA, Tucows, along with other well-known sites on the Internet, blacked out their Tucows Software Download site on January 18th from 8 am to 8 pm EST (1300-0100 UTC).

UDRP

In November 2012, A WIPO arbitrator declared that Tucows' Marker.com should be transferred to Marker Völkl (International) GmbH, a German ski-equipment manufacturer that owns Marker.de. The ruling did not result in a transfer given that there are ongoing legal proceedings initiated by both parties. Tucows got the domain name as part of its Mailbank acquisition of surnames, which is used to offer email addresses to customers. Marker noted that sponsored links on the page were for ski products.

Transfer of Cheapies.com Registrations

In November 2013, Tucows was selected by ICANN to takeover Domain Name registrations belonging to Cheapies.com, a Registrar that was de-accredited by ICANN in 2013 after they failed to comply with their RAA. The bulk transfer of the registrations is stipulated in the RAA, and registrants did not have to pay for the transfer. The now-terminated registrar had less than 12,000 registrations at the time of termination.

External links

• Tucows corporate website
• Tucows software download
• YummyNames
• Hover
• Butterscotch