TIL: Tucows bought Enom, Namecheap sued them and won

[Carson Dyle]

I always liked registering domain names with Enom, which I did through their reseller, Namecheap. The free distributed DNS service was a big seller for me, and Namecheap has a simple web interface for managing that DNS. Works well for managing a small number of domains.

Some years ago Namecheap became its own registrar, but my Enom domains remained with Enom. Which was good. Didn't have to worry about DNS systems changing, etc.

Then Tucows bought enom in January 2017, which I didn't know about. Apparently Namecheap had a contractual agreement with Enom that said that they could transfer all of their resold domains to their registry if Enom was acquired by someone else. They tried to do that but were denied by Tucows. Namecheap had to sue them, and won. A court ordered 3.2 million domain names be transferred to Namecheap.

 

[brianmanahan]

does it make me a terrible person because i've always used godaddy?

 

[GagHalfrunt]

does it make me a terrible person because i've always used godaddy?

Terrible? No. Mentally ill? Possibly.

 

[BoomerD]

I didn’t know tucows was still around...

 

[Carson Dyle]

BTW, Namecheap now offers free WHOIS privacy. If you want to enable it for existing domains you have to order their Whoisguard service through their online store, and be charged $0.

Seems odd, but I'm guessing this process is only until they can make it a checkbox in their management interface.