tsx tc founded flint michigan 1993 headquarters toronto ontario key people elliot noss president and ceo stanley stern chairman industry internet services mobile telecommunications products opensrs ting hover revenue 80.9 million usd 2009 1 net income 12.2 million usd 2009 1 employees 175 2012 2 website tucows.com alexa rank 25 121 august 2015 update 3 tucows inc. is a publicly traded internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in toronto ontario canada . it is one of the largest domain registrars and operates hover and opensrs a platform for domain resellers . in 2012 tucows launched ting a wireless service provider and continues to operate its namesake directory of shareware and freeware software downloads . the company was formed in flint michigan in 1993 . the tucows logo is two cow heads a play on the homophone two cows . contents 1 company history 2 business lines 2.1 domain portfolio management 2.2 email services 2.3 retail services 2.4 mobile phone services 3 de emphasis and divestment of business lines 3.1 de emphasis of software downloads 3.2 divestment of web hosting accounts 3.3 divestment of equity interest in afilias 4 reputation 4.1 domain name add grace period agp abuse 4.2 registrar of illegal domain names 5 see also 6 references 7 external links company history edit tucows headquarters in toronto scott swedorski started tucows in 1993 to provide users with downloads of both freeware and trial versions of shareware . the name originally was an acronym for the ultimate collection of winsock software . 4 internet direct owned and operated by john nemanic bill campbell and colin campbell acquired tucows in 1996 . 4 sti ventures acquired tucows in 1999 . 4 the company employed roughly 30 employees in flint michigan in 1998 with additional employees in canada . citation needed scott swedorski personally oversaw day to day activity in the flint office located in the white house building on beecher road in flint for several years . citation needed in 2000 tucows acquired linux weekly news . 5 in 2001 tucows became a wholly owned subsidiary of infonautics and after acquiring tucows infonautics changed its name to tucows 6 a business tactic called a reverse takeover . on august 26 2002 tucows sold elibrary and encyclopedia.com its search and reference services properties acquired during its merger with infonautics to alacritude . 6 in 2004 tucows acquired boardtown corporation a billing software provider . on august 19 2005 tucows went public 7 on the toronto stock exchange and the american stock exchange . 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 like smith.net or brown.org . mailbank generates income from selling advertising on the websites of the name based domains and also from customers who want e mail accounts with their surname as the domain . on june 15 2006 noss disclosed that the portfolio of netidentity s surnames 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 . 8 on february 19 2008 tucows announced that they were launching a personal names service using their portfolio of 39 000 surname domain names . 9 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 . 9 on august 26 2006 tucows won an ebay auction for the web calendar site kiko.com . the company planned on rolling kiko s features into their existing email platform . 10 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 . 11 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 . 12 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 registration service powered by tucows inc that started in july 2008 . all iyd domaindirect and netidentity customers are forwarded to hover.com to resume their domain needs . 13 on november 6 2008 tucows announced that they were launching butterscotch.com an online video network that with video tutorials to explain internet technology and that the site was beginning with 35 video tutorials with plans to reach 500 clips by spring 2009 . 14 on october 14 2011 butterscotch.com producer sean carruthers stated production was shut down . 15 in december 2014 tucows launched realnames offering e mail service using surname domains obtained with acquiry of mailbank.com inc. business lines edit tucows is the third largest icann accredited registrar in the world and the largest publicly traded registrar . 12 in july 2008 tucows rebranded its wholesale services as open srs . 16 domain portfolio management edit tucows has three sources of income from its domain portfolio 1 advertising from pages of domains within their domain name portfolio ; 17 2 sales of domains from their portfolio which is constantly being replenished ; 18 3 auction of the steady stream of thousands of domain names that expire every day and become available for resale . 19 in november 14 2007 tucows disclosed that they offer pay per click advertising on the pages of domains within their domain name portfolio . 17 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 . 17 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 . 17 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 . 20 on may 7 2008 tucows announced it put a process in place for the regular sale of direct navigation names . 21 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 . 22 tucows announced on june 12 2008 that they have reached an agreement with afternic to auction tucows large daily inventory of expired domain names . 19 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 . 19 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 . 23 revenue will be shared automatically without the reseller having to take any additional action . 23 tucows chose afternic as a partner even though snapnames with register.com and namejet with netsol enom are the dominant players in expired domains . 24 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 . 25 the service was created especially for marketers to obtain a high quality domain name from tucows inventory . 25 customers have the option of purchasing a premium domain name outright or leasing the name . 25 in 2009 one of tucows subsidiaries buydomains holdings sold another premium domain name for a record 50 000 for myhomepage.com . 26 on february 20 2008 tucows announced a portfolio of over 1 000 gems or domain names that have the high potential value such as jewellers.com actresses.com basketballplayers.com and projectmanagers.com . 27 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 . 28 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 . 29 tucows failed to respond and the national arbitration forum ordered tucows to transfer weidner.com to weidner investment services . 29 email services edit tucows provides millions of email boxes through their network of over 9 000 service providers . 30 customers of tucows fully hosted email service are provided with pop3 imap wap and webmail access . 30 providers using tucows email service have the option of using tucows spam and virus filtering with their current email infrastructure . 30 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 . 31 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 . 32 33 on october 6 2008 cluster a again suffered another multi day outage affecting at least 50 % of users and at times all users . 34 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 . 35 retail services edit tucows sells services to consumers and small businesses and offers personalized email through net identity . 20 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 . 8 mobile phone services edit in february 2012 tucows launched a new mobile phone business called ting which resells voice and data services on sprint and t mobile networks . 36 de emphasis and divestment of business lines edit de emphasis of software downloads edit tucows maintains a download archive that includes more than 30 000 software titles in its worldwide network of partner sites . although some listing features now have fees basic listing remains free . tucows founder scott swedorski announced his resignation in november 2003 . 4 on march 10 2006 tucows content division closed its satellite office located in flint michigan and relocated the remaining editorial functions to its corporate head office in toronto . on february 7 2008 tucows disclosed that tucows plans to de emphasize the software download aspect of their business . 20 divestment of web hosting accounts edit on may 6 2008 tucows announced that they are getting out of the web hosting business . 37 as part of the divestment tucows signed an agreement for hostopia to purchase about 14 000 domain direct netidentity and itsyourdomain.com iyd customer web hosting accounts and would migrate the web hosting accounts to hostopia s unified web service platform by july 2008 . 37 divestment of equity interest in afilias edit on november 5 2008 tucows announced that it was selling its entire 7.38 % equity interest in afilias for 7.4 million . 38 afilias is the registry operator of the . info and . aero tlds and the service provider