Retiring Tucows Downloads

Wow, nostalgia, it's been years since even hearing about Tucows. Tucows was a huge part of my childhood from 10 to 18 years old. Good run and great early repository for software. Thanks Tucows.

tucows and download.com were the "app stores" of the web before the walled gardens of the big companies today. You could distribute your app to one of these sites and have it be automatically syndicated to thousands of other download sites. This is how distributed web worked. We're making the web more centralized and it's not just social media and youtube.

The article doesn&#x27;t link to the Tucows Downloads Archive, for whatever reason it only links to the archive.org homepage.<p>Here&#x27;s the direct link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;tucows" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;tucows</a><p>It also appears that the archive wasn&#x27;t manually reviewed; some items are just screenshots, and others are unrelated to software at all.<p>Example (mildly nsfw): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;tucows_71077_Sung_Hi_Lee_2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;tucows_71077_Sung_Hi_Lee_2</a>

Some related obscure nostalgia - I used to like downloading games from Happy Puppy.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000815211217&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.happypuppy.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000815211217&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.happyp...</a><p>&quot;Happy Puppy was launched on Valentine&#x27;s Day 1995, establishing itself as the first-ever commercial games site. It was an overnight success and has been the leading gaming lifestyle publication on the web ever since.&quot;<p>Related in the sense that it was another site I would download software from in that era. Disappeared in 2006.

&gt; We’re pleased to say that much of the software and other assets that made up the Tucows Downloads library have been transferred to our friends at the Internet Archive for posterity.<p>The usage of the word &quot;much&quot; makes it seem like IA crawled most of the archive, &quot;probably&quot;.<p>@ Elliot Noss:<p>The real classy way to shut down something as historically important as this would be to transfer a 100% (edit: ~100%) dump to the IA.<p>(Hoping to be disproved.)

Excellent run! It&#x27;s been ages since I&#x27;ve downloaded things from Tucows, mainly late 90s and early 00s. The era of PlanetQuake and all the other sites. Hmm, off to the IA for a nostalgia browse...

Tucows and, the more Mac focused, Version Tracker, where a huge part of the early Web.<p>Besides finding new stuff (which was awesome), in those days you had to manually check in those sites to see if there were new versions of your apps. I&#x27;d be very surprised if you told me back then that we&#x27;re all OK with apps calling home to check for updates regularly.

Downloading Winamp from Tucows so I could listen to illegally downloaded NOFX mp3s. The good old days when the WWW was so new and exciting for me.

Elliott Noss is super smart and humble. Left a huge impression on me when I met him way back in the day as a youngster. He had nothing to prove at all, just super bright and very fun to talk to; I met him at a tradeshow and he spent 30 minutes with me just because he thought our product was cool.

Wow, end of an era. I guess it realistically ended a while ago, but I remember downloading stuff from Tucows when I was a kid playing around on the internet with dialup.<p>I was really surprised to learn recently that they own Ting (the cell phone provider) and big domain-related businesses like eNom and Hover. Looks like they&#x27;re doing just fine.

This is the worst part of the internet: Tucows was such a bit part of life for so many people, and now it&#x27;s just... gone. We have the internet archive, which is great, but it feels like there should be a way to highlight touchstones these sites.

I remember downloading x-files windows 98 themes when I was a kid on dialup on weekends. good times. Also surprised it still exists. was a great time to be into computers.

Here it is, for your nostalgic pleasure (try Arizona, it works):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19970212181139&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tucows.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;19970212181139&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tucows...</a><p>I&#x27;m amazed at how many clicks you have to go through to actually see software. No &quot;top 10&quot; list at the start, no &quot;popular&quot;, nothing. You have to pick a mirror, which brings you to an almost empty page, click a small &quot;Windows 95&quot; link hidden on the left sidebar, then pick a category, and only then you see the actual software.<p>Odd how much UX leeway you have when you&#x27;re about the only thing on the web.

There was something magical about this era when I was a child downloading gameboy emulators like No$GBA.<p>I miss download.com<p>Is there fewer people making desktop software nowadays? It seems there is less software available. It&#x27;s also very hard to be profitable and monetize software.

The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software - wow internet history. I forgot that TUCOWS even stood for that

&gt; Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk. Maintaining the Tucows Downloads site pulls people away from the work that moves our businesses forward.<p>This is the larger tragedy.

Yes, I went from audio coupled 120 baud BBS in 1983 to the 56K by 1993 and loved Tucows when they emerged. Many happy years spent learning at their knee - as others have said, Thanks, Tucows - live long and prosper in whatever internet sea you now swim in....

The second best thing after print magazines&#x27; CD-ROMs... also extinct :-&lt;

Used Tucows as most reliable source for downloading software for Windows back in the days (I think I did not trusted e.g. download.com). Will remember all the cows on the early internet days ;)

&quot;The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software&quot; ... For a company that&#x27;s now the 2nd large domain name registrar, started and sold a successful MVNO, and runs a fiber internet service it&#x27;s been a crazy ride. I had no idea the download site was still up. That and Sourceforge were so important at one point.

I&#x27;ve been selling Windows and Mac software online since 2005, so I remember them well. Tucows and similar sites were quite an important part of selling software online as an Indie back then. But they became less and less relevant as search engines improved. Eventually most of the download sites just became automatically generated online garbage heaps, trying to trick you into downloading things you didn&#x27;t want, adding dodgy brower toolbar extensions and pushing fake awards ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;successfulsoftware.net&#x2F;2007&#x2F;08&#x2F;16&#x2F;the-software-awards-scam&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;successfulsoftware.net&#x2F;2007&#x2F;08&#x2F;16&#x2F;the-software-award...</a> ). In some ways it is good that download sites are less relevant, but we have just swapped one lot of gatekeepers for another (mostly Google and Apple).

Pleasantly surprised to know Tucows is a thriving internet company.<p>Nostalgia overload. I remember downloading so much stuff from tucows.

Well that&#x27;s one less email I&#x27;ll be getting every week - the &quot;Weekly Statistics Report&quot; for downloads of my software from tucows.<p>As below:<p>&quot;You receive weekly download and CPC statistics because you are a Tucows ARC Subscriber. If you no longer wish to receive this communication, please login to ARC, enter the Profile Manager and uncheck the box marked &quot;Weekly mailings.<p>Files: weekly_report_29299_20210110004906-20210117004906.zip&quot;

Oh wow. I have not heard of or seen tucows for ages. The last time i visited their page must have been 15 years ago because it looked like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20050715014500&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tucows.com&#x2F;preview&#x2F;194967" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20050715014500&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tucows...</a>

first thought: What, Tucows still existed?<p><i>clicks on link</i><p>second thought: That&#x27;s not Tucows! Where is the logo with the two cows???

Wow.Just wow.The last time I was on their website was probably nearly 20 years ago. No way I would have imagined they not only exist but also hiring. Kind of glad they pivoted to other areas.<p>[Edit]: I occasionally cover tech stocks in my spare time- this is definitely one I&#x27;ll write about!

I didn’t even realise Tucows were still around. Man I loved that site in the 90s.<p>So long and thanks for all the fish :’(

Haven&#x27;t thought about Tucows in many years... I used to love exploring it to find new software to try out. There were so many interesting utilities and such to enhance Windows 95&#x2F;98. Would love to give it one last browse. Ah well! Thanks for the good times, Tucows.

Where will I be able to download my winsock.dll apps now though?

End of an era. I remember using them consistently in the mid- to late-90’s. Sad to see them go but change is the only constant in life. Goodbye old friend!

Tucows is still a domain registry. (See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tucowsdomains.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tucowsdomains.com</a>)<p>In my experience, they are one of the shadier ones, but maybe they are all bad these days. For example, if a rare domain (E.g. any three-letter .com) is registered with them and about to expire, instead of releasing it as they should, it will be held for auction.

One of the early success stories in Toronto based internet companies (besides ISPs).<p>Hover is pretty good. It looks like their fiber business is growing too.

I own several domains that I registered through Hover.com .<p>I noticed the billing statement always comes through as from Tuwcows Corp, but I didn&#x27;t realize Tuwcows was it&#x27;s own thing that existed apart from just Hover.<p>According to Wikipedia, its been around since 1993, so a relative dinosaur on the internet. Wild.

I use to browse tucows and freshmeat and seeing what new software people released, was fun to see what people created. Just a nice updated list of new applications.<p>Now I have no idea what people are creating unless they post to a few forums I follow, so limited.

Nostalgia for sure! Tucows was one of the originals for me. Back when AOL was still running on 28.8k...thank you for being a part of my childhood and the start of the internet revolution! Tucows, Lycos, Geocities...wow! Where has time gone?!?!

Man... I had some of the first freeware programs I developed listed on Tucows. They were crucial to developing a userbase. I had no idea they were still around, and I&#x27;m thrilled to see they made it this far. Farewell, old friend!

Just this week I was trying to find an animated Windows 98 startup screen replacement I used of a borg cube.. couldn&#x27;t quite find the exact one but found a few linked on tucows and FTP archives of tucows :)

Great memories of using Tucows. It was a dependable source of software. Have a similar feeling using f-droid now. Look for a useful tool, and find something completely different, that is either useful or fun.

It&#x27;s funny how you never know when your last visit to a site will be!<p>One day it&#x27;s your go-to site for things, the next it&#x27;s not on your radar.<p>Maybe search engines, mobile, and app stores all contributed to changing the .

Though it is now headquartered in Toronto, it is interesting to note that Tucows was originally founded in Flint Michigan, the only internet company I&#x27;m aware of that comes from there.

Reminds me of download.com and how that was such a go-to site for me. I still have that in my muscle memory when I open a new tab, along with a few others from my childhood.

Now that is a name I had almost forgotten about.<p>Like many I had plenty of downloads from there, back in the day, on the university connection.

Tucows made lots of Macs great!<p>With a Mac, it was sometimes hard to find software. Tucows usually had something for you!

I still have my ‘official mirror’ T-shirt from Tucows (1994?)

tucows, jumbo, and x2ftp.oulu.fi were my goto places :-)

Wow!! That’s a blast from the past. Goodbye and Thanks!

That thing was still alive? Wow.

But where will I download TCPMan and Trumpet Winsock from now???

pour one out for tucows

&gt; Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk.<p>Hard disagree unless you want&#x2F;need to update it. They’ve moved it to internet archive, so I’m happy, but still a dumb statement.