Tucows Inc. is an American–Canadian, publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States. The company is composed of three independent businesses: Tucows Domains, Ting Internet, and Wavelo.
Tucows, which stands for "The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software", was founded in Flint, Michigan, in 1993 as a shareware and freeware software download site. Its original logo was two cow heads, a play on the homophone "two cows". The company shuttered its downloads business in 2021.
In 2012, Tucows launched Ting Mobile, a wireless service provider, and used the same brand to launch its fiber Internet provider business, Ting Internet, in 2015. In 2020, Tucows sold its wireless business to Dish Network while continuing to operate Ting Internet. The billing platform Tucows built for Ting Mobile was spun off into an independent OSS/BSS SaaS business, Wavelo.
Company history
In the early 1990s, Tucows was hosted on university and public servers (much like Yahoo! and Google were in their early stages). Tucows' mission was to provide users with downloads of both freeware and trial versions of shareware. Internet Direct, owned and operated by John Nemanic, Bill Campbell, and Colin Campbell, acquired Tucows in 1996. STI Ventures acquired Tucows in 1999.
In 2000, Tucows acquired Linux Weekly News (which was then "unacquired" in 2002).
In 2001, Tucows was acquired by Infonautics, which then changed its name to Tucows, a business tactic called a "reverse takeover". On August 26, 2002, Tucows sold eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com, its search and reference services properties inherited from Infonautics, to Alacritude. The Internet Archive preserves a full copy of the Tucows Software Library, with thousands of software titles both in the latest versions, as well as in older versions not yet available through Tucows.
In 2004, Tucows acquired Boardtown Corporation, a billing software provider based in Starkville, Mississippi.
On August 19, 2005, Tucows went public, after completing a secondary offering, listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange as TC and the NASDAQ as TCX.
In January 2006, Tucows completed its acquisition of certain assets of Critical Path, an outsourced email services provider.
In June 2006 Tucows paid $18 million to purchase Mailbank.com Inc, a company that owns over 17,000 domain names for common surnames, such as smith.net and brown.org. Mailbank generates income from ads on its websites (from domain parking) and from customers who want e-mail accounts with their surname in the domain name.
On June 15, 2006, Noss disclosed that the portfolio of NetIdentity's domain names acquired by Tucows represents at least 68% of surnames in the United States and Europe, and that the cost of the acquisition was $18 million."Tucows Podcast on Its NetIdentity Acquisition - Transcript", Seeking Alpha, June 15, 2006. On February 19, 2008, Tucows announced that they were launching a "Personal Names Service" using their portfolio of 39,000 domain names. "The launch of the Personal Names Service marks the complete integration of the surname assets we acquired with NetIdentity into our wholesale channel", said Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows."Tucows Launches Personal Names Service", Tucows Press Release, February 19, 2008.
On August 26, 2006, Tucows won an eBay auction for the web calendar site Kiko.com. The company planned to roll Kiko's features into their existing email platform.
On July 27, 2007, Tucows acquired ItsYourDomain.com (IYD), another privately held ICANN-accredited wholesale registrar offering domain services through a network of over 2,500 affiliates with over 700,000 domains under management, paying US$10.35 million.Jay Westerdal, "ItsYourDomain acquired by Tucows", Domain Tools, July 30, 2007 ItsYourDomain.com managed 699,951 domains compared to Tucows's 5,919,987, at the time of the sale in July 2007 ItsYourDomain.com's monthly growth of 29,181 exceeded Tucows growth of 21,126.
By June 2008, Tucows had a total of three domain name registration services called ItsYourDomain (IYD), NetIdentity, and DomainDirect. Tucows decided to discontinue these three services, and merge them into one new domain name registration service, called Hover. Hover is a simple domain name registration service powered by Tucows Inc, that started in July 2008. All IYD, DomainDirect, and NetIdentity customers are fulfilled by Hover.com.
On November 6, 2008, Tucows announced that they were launching Butterscotch.com, an online video network with video tutorials to explain Internet technology, starting with 35 video tutorials and plans to reach 500 clips by Spring 2009. "Tucows Sweetens Technology Learning with Butterscotch.com", Canadian PR Newswire, November 6, 2008. On October 14, 2011, Butterscotch.com producer Sean Carruthers stated production had been shut down.Twitter-Sean Carruthers. Butterscotch shut-down
In December 2014, Tucows launched RealNames, offering e-mail service using domain names acquired from Mailbank.com Inc.
On January 20, 2017, the company acquired eNom for $83.5 million, making Tucows the second-largest domain registrar in the world.
The company announced in January 2021 it was shuttering its Downloads business, as it was no longer essential to the rest of the company's business, but had transferred all of its assets and content to the Internet Archive prior to its closure.
Business lines In July 2008, Tucows rebranded its wholesale services as "Open SRS". "Re-introducing OpenSRS", Open SRS Reseller Blog, July 28, 2008.
As of July 2023, Tucows is the third-largest accredited registrar in the world.https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/registrar/others Domain name registrations, by registrar
Domain portfolio management Tucows has three sources of income from its domain portfolio: 1) Advertising from pages of domains within their domain name portfolio; 2) Sales of domains from their portfolio, which is constantly being replenished; "Tucows Sells 2,500 Domain Names", PRNewswire-FirstCall, June 19, 2007. 3) Auction of the steady stream of thousands of domain names that expire every day and become available for resale.
On November 14, 2007, Tucows disclosed that they offer pay-per-click advertising on the pages of domains within their domain name portfolio. When a user types one of these domain names into the address of the browser (direct navigation), they are presented with dynamically generated links which are pay-per-click advertising. Every time a user clicks on one of the links listed on a web page, it generates revenue for Tucows through its partnership with third parties who provide syndicated pay-per-click results.SEC Filings for TCX. "Form 10-Q for TUCOWS INC /PA/", November 14, 2007.
On February 7, 2008, Tucows disclosed that it had switched from Google Ads to a new advertising partner in 2007, which led to a one-third increase in its revenue."Tucows Inc. Q4 2007 Earnings Call Transcript", Seeking Alpha, February 7, 2008.
On May 7, 2008, Tucows announced it put a process in place for the regular sale of direct navigation names. "Tucows Inc. Q1 2008 Earnings Call Transcript", Seeking Alpha, May 7, 2008. These domain names would come from names that expire each month from customers who decide they no longer want the domain names and that Tucows is able to select the ones they want to keep from these domain names."RBC Capital Markets Growth Conference" , Tucows Presentation, October 27, 2008.
Tucows announced on June 12, 2008, that they have reached an agreement with Afternic to auction Tucows’ large daily inventory of expired domain names. "We have over eight million domains under management and thousands expiring every day, so this deal provides us with a great way to share revenue with our resellers while participating in Afternic’s popular secondary domain name marketplace”, said Bill Sweetman, General Manager of Tucows Domain Portfolio. "Tucows Collaborates With Namemedia’s Afternic.Com To Auction Daily Inventory Of Expired Domain Names" , Tucows Press Release, June 12, 2008. Tucows will share 10% of the gross sale price with the reseller for the sale of expired domains that were originally registered through the reseller. Revenue will be shared automatically without the reseller having to take any additional action. "Tucows and Afternic.com Team Up for Expired Domain Auction" , Tucows Corporate blog, June 12, 2008. Tucows chose Afternic as a partner even though SnapNames with Register.com and NameJet with NetSol/eNom are the dominant players in expired domains. "Tucows and Afternic Deal Q&A", Domain Name Wire, June 12, 2008.
On October 29, 2008, Tucows announced that it would begin direct sales from their inventory of premium domain names under the brand name of Yummy Names. The service was created especially for marketers to obtain a high-quality domain name from Tucows inventory. Customers have the option of purchasing a premium domain name outright or leasing the name. In 2009 one of Tucows' subsidiaries, Buydomains Holdings, sold another premium domain name for a record $50,000 for Myhomepage.com.
On February 20, 2008, Tucows announced a portfolio of over 1,000 domain names that have the high potential value such as "Jewellers.com", "Actresses.com", "BasketballPlayers.com", and "ProjectManagers.com".
In February 2008, Tucows successfully defended against an arbitration proceeding over Batchelor.com, which it had acquired as part of its NetIdentity purchase. The complaint had been filed by Ken Batchelor Cadillac Company, a car dealership. A National Arbitration Forum panel determined that the dealership had not established rights in the mark "Batchelor". In fact, Tucows has won all surname-related arbitration proceedings.
In 2007, Weidner Investment Services filed a complaint claiming that Weidner was its trademark or service mark and asked the National Arbitration Forum to order the transfer of Weidner.com from Tucows to Weidner. Tucows failed to respond, and the National Arbitration Forum ordered Tucows to transfer Weidner.com to Weidner Investment Services."Weidner Investment Services, Inc. v. Tucows.com Co." Claim Number: FA0709001080246, National Arbitration Forum, November 7, 2007.
In January 2017, eNom was sold to Canadian domain seller Tucows for $83.5M Canadian.
Email services Tucows provides millions of email boxes through their network of over 9,000 service providers. "Tucows Announces Enhancement to the Tucows Email Service", Tucows Press Release, January 31, 2008. Customers of Tucows fully hosted email service are provided with POP3, IMAP, WAP and webmail access. Providers using Tucows Email Service have the option of using Tucows' spam and virus filtering with their current email infrastructure.
As part of the NetIdentity acquisition, Tucows had problems migrating retail customers' email from a third-party provider to Tucows in-house mail systems in September 2006.Joel Shore, "System migration may be the most dangerous thing you ever do", IT World, September 26, 2006.
Starting August 12, 2008, Tucows Email Service running on their servers designated as Cluster A experienced a multi-day outage lasting until August 15, 2008. On October 6, 2008, Cluster A again suffered another multi-day outage affecting at least 50% of users and at times all users. As of the afternoon of October 9, 2008, this cluster was still partially down ("degraded") preventing an unknown number of users from being able to retrieve email.
Retail services Tucows sells services to consumers and small businesses and offers personalized email through net identity. Tucows also offers customers hosting and other services with NetIdentity. Tucows also expected to receive income for pay per click advertising revenue from domain parking the surnames.
Mobile phone services