Avast Purchased Piriform — CCleaner, Speccy, Recuva and Defraggler to Remain Free

Avast Purchased Piriform

Avast Purchased Piriform on Wednesday, July 19th. Piriform created the software CCleaner, Speccy, Recuva, and Defraggler. The news of the acquisition comes from Avast’s press release; Avast acquires Piriform, maker of CCleaner just two days ago. Avast seems to be growing exponentially in the antivirus market. They claim they have become the number two antivirus company in the world. They back it up and say it’s based on earnings. Here is the public statement on their website Record Revenue Puts Avast in Second Among Security Industry Leaders.
Avast Expanding Their Product Line
Avast is expanding their product line, and like every company, they want to be the best in the market. The acquisition comes only a little after a year of the purchase of AVG. AVG was known for having a robust and complete product for free. Bought for $1.3 Billion on July 7th, 2016, their press goes of the details statement; Avast Announces Agreement to Acquire AVG for $1.3B
AVG, known as one of the best free antivirus solutions was a robust antivirus. Antiviruses, in general, are an annoyance but a necessity. AVG was good at hiding in the background. Anti Virus software is a product you shouldn’t choose the second or third best option if there is a clear best. Since my first impression of Avast years ago, it has been categorized in with McAfee and Norton. For regular PC users, they are better than no antivirus at all. To me they may as well be Adware, sales people constantly try to give them away basically. At least I’ve seen this with Mcafee and Norton. The best Antiviruses should have a solid detection rate, great community and a security team that hunts viruses like ESET, and it should be easy to make it unnoticeable unless needed.
According to the article Bitdefender vs. Avast Free: Which AV Software Wins? By HENRY T. CASEY there are more detected false negatives, and Avast has a minusculely less detection rate than Bit Defender, but that’s enough to get infected. Granted, I wouldn’t rely solely on an Antivirus to keep yourself safe. Your browsing habits are the most reliable security. While this difference is small, it’s enough to look away. Bitdefender is a fantastic antivirus, probably the best I’ve used. My second favorite is Eset Nod32 as it is incredibly light weight and unintrusive while even Bitdefender is something that I am aware of most of the time.
Will Piriform Help Avast Come out on top?
After Avast purchased Piriform and AVG, I am curious to see if they will eventually become top dog in the Antivirus market. For now, I am a bit concerned about the future of the Piriform products. I’m not a fan of antivirus “special feature” cleaners as they usually seem like cookie cutter copies. They say they will remain free, and I believe they will. I don’t know if they will eventually become part of Avast Antivirus. If not directly, I’d rather not have ads for Avast in Piriform programs. It would make sense, but I would stop using them immediately if that were to happen and switch to Glary Utilities, which I may do anyway.
Piriform recently came out with a new addition to their CCleaner versions, CCleaner Cloud. This product announcement was exciting, and I would love to see more cloud based products for remote administration so I can keep my other computers clean without having to be there or sign in remotely. If Avast continues the Piriform product line as it was, separate from an Antivirus suite, I think it may have potential.
If you are unfamiliar with Piriform, this is from Avast’s Press Release Page:
About Piriform:
Piriform are global leaders in system optimization software, founded in 2004 by Guy Saner and Lindsey Whelan. Piriform software, which makes PC, Mac and Android devices clean, safe and run fast, is used by hundreds of millions of home and business users worldwide. A Piriform product is installed more than 23 million times a month.
