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Avast Now Owns CCleaner After Acquiring Piriform (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Security firm Avast has acquired software firm Piriform. Not only does the acquired company make CCleaner, but many other solid programs too. In fact, the rest of Piriform's library -- Recuva, Speccy, and Defraggler -- are staples of the Windows freeware community. "CCleaner is a leading brand in the market, used by 130 million people, including 15 million Android users. CCleaner has an extensive and extremely loyal community of tech-savvy users, who need to speed up and optimize their PC and Android experience. Avast will maintain the CCleaner brand of products along with Avast's existing performance optimization products, Avast Cleanup and AVG Tune Up. With the addition of CCleaner, Avast has dramatically expanded its product offerings in the PC and smartphone optimization market reaching customers around the world who demand faster performance," says Avast. Vince Steckler, CEO of Avast explains, "We see many commonalities between CCleaner and Avast, allowing for great new products for our user bases. Avast and CCleaner are the top two downloaded products on popular download sites. They are both known by advanced users as focused on performance, so we believe there will be a great interest from our CCleaner customers in using Avast security products and vice versa. In today's connected world, it's all about speed and high performance, and with Piriform's robust technology we can address this need perfectly. We look forward to working with the Piriform team to grow the business together."
Now the freeware Windows maintenance software market has finally gone....pear-shaped.
YEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH!
Avast used to be pretty decent, and then it turned into ungodly bloatware.
CCleaner used to be pretty decent, and then it turned into ungodly bloatware.
I can only imagine what's going to happen now that they'll be having children.
Perhaps I am the only one, but this is meaningless to me.
I haven't used CCleaner since Windows Vista got released ten years ago.
>> solid programs
I'll bet. You'll probably need to increase your fiber intake to get rid of them.
>> Recuva
Er...no comment.
Where's the god damn channel changer!
So there's further consolidation in the adware/bloatware removal market. One could say this might be a part of Avast conspiracy!
To think I paid for it. Why would the Avast people announce this? It would be smarter to hit people like me with this news with a bunch of desktop ads before I uninstall.
We already know the product will be shitty now.
I guess it won't be long before it bloats up or nags the shit of users. I'll be uninstalling from my networks with the quickness if so.
Good, maybe now CCleaner can go back on Ninite, as it was Piriform that pulled it.
Avast has been available on Ninite forever, so I expect CCleaner to show up again.
Ah, ccleaner. Just what I need to clean my browser cache, registry, and temp files! I admit it's not perfect, which is why I have Best Buy run a pc tune up every six months. Best to get unwanted toolbars removed by the pros is what I always say. Don't forget to have them make sure your page file is a static size though, sometimes they forget!
I wonder what direction is Ccleaner going knowing the reputation of Avast.
disguising as news?
Avast will maintain the CCleaner brand of products
Good, because I generally use CCleaner to get rid of crappy anti-virus apps.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's called the address bar, and it's right at the top of your browser window. Just type in http://facebook.com./ You'll see how it looks to have a big commercial with some posts in between.
Czech antivirus (and lately quite the bloatware) AVAST is largely held by an US company with ties to NSA. Therefore I stopped using AVAST over five years ago, and now, I will never update CCleaner for as long as it's possible. Then I will switch to something else, without ties to US gov't.
Quick! Download the latest CCleaner, Recuva, and Defraggler versions before craziness happens:
Ccleaner Portable
Defraggler Portable
Recuva Portable
CCleaner was originally named Crap Cleaner, another example of programmers not choosing sensible names.
I install CCleaner on PCs all the time and tell people to run it at least once a month. Of course, ever since one of the major version bumps (I think 4.0?) I've had to precede that with a file called "ccleaner_disable_monitoring.reg" so I don't have to go into settings and manually disable the "active monitoring" crap that the program then warns you and "ARE YOU SURE?!?!?!111" smacks you for trying to turn off. I used to install Avast on everything too since it was free and didn't slow the machines down as much as other options, but now I have to un-check a bunch of boxes in the installer and every new iteration and they keep adding useless "modules" that annoy the crap out of everyone, so as of Windows 10 I just tell people Windows Defender is fine and leave it at that.
It'll be interesting to see how they intend to modify their products. Also, when did AVG become a re-skinned Avast? That was surprising.
Thanks for the -1 you fucker. you know who you are. I hope it made your day.
Next time I won't waste my time compiling better links with additional sources for this fucking website.
No need for the crap these guys and their ilk sell.
That helps Avast's Jumpshot (www.jumpshot.com) to "paint a complete picture of online customer behavior"?
CCleaner be swabbing me disks.
Why is this -1? He did a better job than the god damn people who run this site writing summaries. Jealous much.
Defraggler, Recuva & CCleaner = good programs (I use them myself) - compliments coming from a freeware dev in myself!
APK
P.S.=> Good job... apk
CCleaner was good. Now Avast is going to integrate all their bloated crap into it. Avast: used to be my anti-virus of choice, then they started adding all sorts of other stuff in there. And they constantly try to trick you into updates / upgrades to get the paid version. Anyway, Avast was already off my computers, CCleaner will be next. Sad...
Broader issue, I think it is a symptom of what is going on with the software companies. They create a good product, that is dedicated to a specific purpose. What then? They have to justify their staff and expenses. So they add new features. And they forget their main focus. Windows, Apple, they all do it. You must change and innovate to force people to buy again. Innovation is hard, good ideas are seldom so they just remake what they already have, with new "features".
See subject: I had code of mine bought up by SuperSpeed.com (for their SuperCache program) that made it ~40% better & they left it PRETTY MUCH ALONE (as it did the job as is) after they placed as a finalist @ MS TechEd 2000-2002 as a finalist in the tougest category there, SQLServer performance enhancement (which my program helped with & how to apply another of their programs more effectively in SuperDisk (which both Mr. John Enck of Windows 2000 magazine & I did writeups on).
APK
P.S.=> The company I "sold-out" to was a different breed/animal though - I like Piriform stuff / & use 3 of their wares (Defraggler in combination w/ another project I helped on that's OpenSource in UltraDefrag - Recuva & CCleaner) myself (as they're good, coming from 1 dev to their team)... I hope it doesn't get turned into "bloatware/adware" etc. (as some here are alluding to) by Avast (whom I have zero experience with using their antivirus or their people) - I don't know THEIR history this way (but I did see what happened to say, McAfee antivirus once others got ahold of it, making it far from what it was & worse)... apk
APK,
I looked at the UltraDefrag. Interesting. Why do you continue to use Defraggler?
Thanks for being more careful communicating. In the past it has been difficult to understand what you write.
Defraggler works = why. So does UltraDefrag (which has a boottime defrag that defraggler doesn't). Defraggler does as good a job & has a nicer GUI (yes, this matters to me).
* BOTH = good defragmentation programs (so I use both, even though I contributed a TINY thing to UltraDefrag (something they can use to UP the priority of the job & conversely/on-the-flip-side, DOWN the priority for things like a "background defrag" especially if trayicon minimized OR for a scheduled job etc.-et al).
APK
P.S.=> "And, there ya have it folks..."
If it works, malware buys it, if it don't, avast will.