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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!
I haven't used CCleaner since Windows Vista got released ten years ago.
I can only imagine what's going to happen now that they'll be having children.
Obeseware.
>> solid programs
I'll bet. You'll probably need to increase your fiber intake to get rid of them.
>> Recuva
Er...no comment.
So there's further consolidation in the adware/bloatware removal market. One could say this might be a part of Avast conspiracy!
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.
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.
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.