Those didn't come till they started pumping the site with banners. From there, malware assholes figured out they could advertise with a duplicate "download" button and get a healthy number of clicks (certainly got me more than once).

They went to shit, but didn't start out that way until they started to try and fund their site through a shit ton of ads.

That was a dark day for the internet. Thank goodness for ad blockers.

I remember a Tucows before the fake download button. But as a kid I definitely downloaded a virus or two on my parent's computer.

It must have been a big reason why these sites fell to irrelevance so quickly. And to think of the missed opportunities...

Tucows killed the goose that laid the golden egg with that change to shady downloaders and never fully recovered or were trusted again by a large majority of ex-users.

Still - at least Tucows left up their mia-culpa (entitled "Tucows Cuts the Crap") https://tucows.com/blog/2016/05/03/tucows-cuts-the-crap/