Avast, today's largest vendor of security software, has acquired Piriform, a UK-based company that is behind many successful desktop and mobile apps, such as CCleaner, Recuva, Speccy, and Defraggler.
The acquisition was announced today in a press release and on the blogs of both companies, but no financial details are currently available.
Piriform is a privately held company based in London, UK, founded back in 2004.
The company's claim to fame is its CCleaner application, a very popular OS optimization utility with versions for Windows, Mac, and Android.
According to Piriform, CCleaner has over 130 million users on desktop and over 15 million users on mobile.
In November 2016, Piriform announced that CCleaner had surpassed two billion downloads, making it one of the most popular pieces of software worldwide, with over 23 million downloads each month.
Based in the Czech Republic, Avast is a cyber-security powerhouse.
An OPSWAT report detailing anti-malware market share places Avast at the top of the antivirus mountain with an estimated market share of 20.48%, as of June 2017.
In July 2016, Avast announced plans to buy fellow antivirus maker AVG for $1.3 billion.
At the time of the acquisition, AVG was the third-ranked anti-malware product.
In its Piriform acquisition announcement, Avast said it plans to continue to offer CCleaner as a standalone product.
Avast already offers two other system optimization utilities, Avast Cleanup and AVG TuneUp.
The acquisition looks like a smart move from Avast to strengthen and consolidate its position in the tune-up utility market.
There is hope among CCleaner users that Avast might do away with the toolbars that currently come bundled with CCleaner.
Source:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...iform-the-company-behind-ccleaner-and-recuva/
