Tucows download site shuts down after more than 25 years

Tucows Downloads will stop, the CEO of Tucows has announced. According to the CEO, the site is old and managing it would keep employees away from more important matters for the company.

At the departure of Tucows Downloads, CEO Elliot Noss reports that most of the software in the range has been placed with the Internet Archive. According to him, the company only kept the download site online for sentimental reasons. “Legacy sites are challenging to manage and therefore a risk,” said Noss, who goes on to say that employees can be better allocated to things that help Tucows move forward as a company.

Tucows started in 1993 as a bulletin board system. Its founder, Scott Swedorski, thought there should be a place to download shareware. The name Tucows stands for The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software. The site grew into a central repository for freeware and program trials.

It’s not the first time Tucows has wanted to pull the plug on the download section. In 2016, the company already considered this, but then decided to keep the site, partly because of the name recognition. It did remove ads from the site.

Tucows’ post 2000 history is one of acquisitions in various sectors. For example, the company took over providers of mail services and transaction software. Linux Weekly News was also briefly owned by the company from 2000 to 2002. The company is now most successful as a domain name registrar, following acquisitions of ItsYourDomain, NetIdentity, DomainDirect and eNom, among others. That made Tucows the largest registrar after Go Daddy. Tucows also has OpenSRS and Hover domain name management services and it introduced telecom companies Ting and Ting Internet.

Tucows in 1996