[wiremine]

This is the worst part of the internet: Tucows was such a bit part of life for so many people, and now it'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.

[dimator]

Well, in this way, the internet is just like real life. How many stores in your hometown have lasted 20, 30 years? It's hard and it sucks losing them, even though they might not be part of your life anymore. They were touchstones to someone's past.

My favorite little bookstore was called Readmore, it's been gone for 20 years, but every time I see the GNC in it's old location, I still get nostalgic. Part of life I guess.

[artificial]

Ah, bookstores! The travesty of consolidation in the last 25 years really cements things. I miss the independent retailers and variety. Kinda makes you think about having total recall and being able to revisit what once was.

[disgrunt]

Tucows isn't gone. They're the second largest domain registrar in the world. They run OpenSRS and Hover, for example. They also run Ting.

[selimthegrim]

Ting was sold to DISH in September. They may have kept the ISP part.

[richardwhiuk]

It's a joint venture now apparently.

[Svperstar]

That is how I felt about the imdb forums and also ftp.cdrom.com. I was huge into Doom and Quake in the mid-late 90s and I used to get a ton of files from ftp.cdrom.com.

All the WAD hosting went to places like doomworld and one day they announced it was shutting down and I realized I hadn't been on it in 5+ years.