Tucows

Tucows is a publicly traded Canadian company, one by GoDaddy and Enom 's three largest registrars of domains. Through its online service OpenSRS recorded many web hosts world domains, was also with Ting a mobile operator launched in the United States and Canada. Tucows was founded in Flint (Michigan) and now has its headquarters in Toronto.

History

1993 Scott Swedorski started developing a website was available on the freeware and shareware for free download. This was given the name Tucows, which is an acronym for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software. The offer was among the first of its kind and quickly became known nationwide as a reference source for Windows software. It was only added in 1999, Tucows also Linux software in the downloads. Some Internet service providers oriented mirrors one for the software archive of Tucows, later also providers were added in Germany. 1995 Tucows was eventually taken over by the Canadian company ISP Internet Direct, which operated a popular download mirror.

The term Tucows was maintained for the entire company. Thereupon Tucows changed from pure download archive and Internet service providers for domain name registrar after it had in 1999 applied for admission to ICANN. Then, the online service OpenSRS was introduced in October 1999, could register for their clients on the third provider domains without Tucows makes its appearance towards them. In the following period the company began to offer besides domains and SSL - Zeritifkate from GeoTrust, Thawte and Co. as well as e -mail mailboxes through the wholesale system, but to date, no web hosting.

Since 19 August 2005 the Company's shares on both the American Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. The sale of domains developed at the material source of income, which is why Tucows applied several times to the management of a top-level domain. This included the generic address. Net, for which the German DENIC wanted to work with the Canadian supplier, but ultimately did not prevail. Last Tucows joined as an applicant on a number of new top-level domains. Example online.

In addition to the domain segment where Tucows operates, among others, with the brands OpenSRS Reseller and hover for consumers, the company acts since mid-2007 as a wireless service provider under the brand Ting. It will not run your own mobile phone network, but used the infrastructure of Sprint Nextel.

Controversy

In 2006, Tucows got into a legal battle in the United States to the domain spamhaus.org that should be suspended. Tucows was announced in this context that one is not bound as a Canadian company to the decision of a U.S. court. ICANN, emphasized that one is even not at all responsible for the domain, but only the respective registrar Tucows or the Registry. Reason for the process was any alleged infringement by the organization The Spamhaus Project, which had a third provider classified as senders of unwanted advertising.