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BitTorrent To Refocus On What Made It Rich - uTorrent (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fresh-commitment dept.

Best known for its uTorrent client, BitTorrent Inc has been focusing more on other projects for a while. But now, with another shake-up imminent, the company has made a fresh commitment to focus on uTorrent and Mainline clients. From an article on TorrentFreak: Caught between the bad publicity generated by millions of pirates using the software for less than legal activities, a reliance on its huge revenue, plus its role in distributing content from signed-up artists, BitTorrent Inc. has at times been required to delicately maneuver around the client's very existence. Now, however, that might be about to change. According to a report from Variety, changes are underway at BitTorrent Inc that could see uTorrent and its Mainline sister client come back into the limelight. First up, the company has yet another new CEO. Rogelio Choy joins the company after spending two years at parking service Luxe Valet. However, Choy is also a former BitTorrent employee, serving as its Chief Operating Officer between 2012 and 2015. The hiring of Choy reportedly coincides with a shake-up of BitTorrent Inc.'s product line. BitTorrent Live, the patented live video streaming project developed by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen, will be set loose as a separate, venture-funded company, Variety reports.

8 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Oh joy. by Chas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So we can have another compromised ad-whoring torrent program to fuck our systems up with.

    NO THANKS!

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
    1. Re:Oh joy. by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sounds like you haven't updated your client in about 7 years. uTorrent is an laden malware shoveling auto updating piece of shit. It was once an awesome client, but people moved to the bloated garbage of azure or whatever it was called just to escape. And that's saying a lot.

  2. If I owned it by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would kill it with fire, scrub the name from the internet, and ensure copies of that once great client turned horrendous chugging piece of malware shit never surface again.

    The best thing BitTorrent Inc could do is forget it ever bought uTorrent and then release the uTorrent version that predated the purchase. What an upgrade that would be.

    1. Re:If I owned it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a mystery to me why anyone is still using uTorrent when qBittorrent is so much better.

      It offers the experience that uTorrent used to be fore it was completely destroyed, with the added benefit that it's also cross-platform.

  3. Too Late? by Voyager529 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When "2.2.1" is one of the Google Autocomplete terms for "utorrent", it basically sums up the fact that uTorrent was 'done' at about that time. Meanwhile, uTorrent qBittorrent and Transmission have nearly all the same features, and seedbox providers have more-or-less standardized on rTorrent/ruTorrent (RIP Torrentflux).

    What is going to make the next version of uTorrent preferable to what's already there? I'm thinking that uTorrent's best days are behind it, and as long as 2.2.1 lives on Oldversion or OldApps, that is its legacy.

  4. Let the crappy adware die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A one-time great, lightweight client compromised to the depths of hell by its corporate masters. Let it die.

  5. BitTorrent Live: wasted potential by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    BitTorrent was so successful because it was an open system: an open standard with a public domain reference implementation. Anybody could use it, anybody could write a client for it.

    BitTorrent Live failed because it was a closed system: a proprietary standard, a super clunky closed-source client, and a closed system that only allows a very small amount of curated content.

    If BitTorrent Live had been as open as the original protocol, or at least free and open for non-commercial use, it could have been revolutionary, and put the power of video streaming back in the hands of individual users. BitTorrent (the company) could then have earned revenue by producing their own client or licensing the technology for commercial use. Instead, it's a flop that was dead-on-arrival.

  6. pile of shit by gravewax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    uTorrent went from being my favourite app to being a Ad pushing bucket of shit. I won't touch it again, they lost my trust and loyalty and I don't think there is anything they can do to get it back. currently using qBittorrent, fast, easy, full featured and ad fucking free