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. Tucows will pay US$10.35 million in cash for IYD. "From our perspective IYD was perhaps the only substantial wholesale domain registration base that might be available over the next few years, and it's a compatible business that we'll be able to fold in to our existing operations," said Elliot Noss, President and CEO, Tucows Inc. ItsYourDomain.com managed 699,951 domains compared to Tucows' 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. ItsYourDomain is now part of the Hover Domain Registrar, along with DomainDirect and NetIdentity. Hover is a simple domain registrar 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.
Other acquisitions
In 2000, Tucows acquired Linux Weekly News. In 2004, Tucows acquired Mississippi-based Boardtown Corporation, a billing software provider. In January, 2006, Tucows completed its acquisition of certain assets of Critical Path, an outsourced email services provider. On 26 August 2006, Tucows was the winning bidder on an eBay auction for the web calendar site Kiko.com. In a blog entry about the purchase, it was revealed that they plan on rolling the features of Kiko into their existing email platform. 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.
Business lines
On February 7, 2008, Elliot Noss, President of Tucows announced during the Q4 Earnings Call that Tucows had decided to change the way they categorize their lines of business into four lines: Domain Registration, Domain Portfolio, email, and retail business Noss announced that Tucows is de-emphasizing software libraries. "We have made these changes for a number of reasons; first the emergence of our domain portfolio as an anticipated high growth area of our business, second, the importance of email as a key driver of future growth, third the increased size of our retail business as a result of recent acquisitions, and fourth the de-emphasis of our software libraries," said Noss. On May 7, 2008 Elliot Noss reported during the Q1 2008 Earnings Call that Tucows sees the domain registration business as a strategic asset that feeds two other business lines - the domain portfolio and email services. "We changed the way that registrars create value out of domain registration, by positioning ourselves to not only take advantage of revenue growth but also to create a long-term asset in the domain name portfolio," says Noss.
Other acquisitions
In 2000, Tucows acquired Linux Weekly News. In 2004, Tucows acquired Mississippi-based Boardtown Corporation, a billing software provider. In January, 2006, Tucows completed its acquisition of certain assets of Critical Path, an outsourced email services provider. On 26 August 2006, Tucows was the winning bidder on an eBay auction for the web calendar site Kiko.com. In a blog entry about the purchase, it was revealed that they plan on rolling the features of Kiko into their existing email platform. 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.
Business lines
On February 7, 2008, Elliot Noss, President of Tucows announced during the Q4 Earnings Call that Tucows had decided to change the way they categorize their lines of business into four lines: Domain Registration, Domain Portfolio, email, and retail business Noss announced that Tucows is de-emphasizing software libraries. "We have made these changes for a number of reasons; first the emergence of our domain portfolio as an anticipated high growth area of our business, second, the importance of email as a key driver of future growth, third the increased size of our retail business as a result of recent acquisitions, and fourth the de-emphasis of our software libraries," said Noss. On May 7, 2008 Elliot Noss reported during the Q1 2008 Earnings Call that Tucows sees the domain registration business as a strategic asset that feeds two other business lines - the domain portfolio and email services. "We changed the way that registrars create value out of domain registration, by positioning ourselves to not only take advantage of revenue growth but also to create a long-term asset in the domain name portfolio," says Noss.