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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.
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!
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!
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.
You mean that's not how it already is?? Upon install, you have a Google Chrome option which is checked by default. And if you don't customize, you get tons of crap that automatically install, like "Auto-update", Shell extensions and background processes. And once in the UI, there's an "Upgrade" section that tries to sell you the "Pro version"...
The simple fact to have an "auto-update" feature is a guarantee that you will receive stuff you don't want at some point.
Perhaps I am the only one, but this is meaningless to me.
Scrabble
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
There's literally a FOSS alternative to Ccleaner called Bleachbit that basically does everything you need while preserving your privacy
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.
CCleaner already is a nag. Every couple of days they come out with a 'new version' which you are prompted to upgrade to if you haven't turned that option off. Other than that it is a great program.
Scrabble
I'm already lobbying to get Xeljanz admitted as a word.
Kwyjibo. It's spelled Kwyjibo. "A big, dumb, balding North American ape with no chin and a short temper."
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Isn't that what it already is? If you think about it. How privileged it is creeping through your cookies, browser histories, cridentials, registry, installed apps, duplicate files, deleted files. It's EVERYTHING you have, its your whole IDENTITY.
Notice the constant updates? Its not necessary but why does it have to update every time you launch it and treats it like its so critical.
Yeah is a Freeware.
"If a product is free, you are the product"
Let that sink in.
There's always Privazer, it finds and deletes more cruft than CCleaner does anyway.
If you play Scrabble using pharmacists' rules (where drug names are accepted), it already is. It's a rheumatoid arthritis medication manufactured by Pfizer.
I'm not gonna link to it (they don't pay me to advertise their product), but if you doubt me, feel free to do a quick Google search.
Other than that it is a great program.
I don't know about "great". It has the glaring defect of, if you use the default options, deleting your firefox session, session backups, and history (so your state is lost and can never be recovered). It's absurd to have this as the default operation. It's the browser equivalent of "rm -rf /".
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
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.
If it works, malware buys it, if it don't, avast will.