Avast Buying AVG for $1.3B To Add Security Software

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Raise your hand if you knew that Avast had access to this kind of money. Also, who knew that AVG was worth $1.3 billion? I need to start paying closer attention to this stuff. ;)

Avast, which is backed by private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners, will begin a tender offer for Amsterdam-based AVG at $25 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement Thursday. That’s 33 percent above AVG’s closing price Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. The deal will give Prague-based Avast more opportunities in internet security-related business, providing it with more scale and an increased geographical reach in both its core business and newer areas such as Internet of Things, according to the statement.
 
And we still get our choice of decent free Antivirus software. As long as both companies have been around I am not surprised.
 
If you'd asked me yesterday I would have guessed that AVG was bigger.
 
Quix said:
If you'd asked me yesterday I would have guessed that AVG was bigger.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter who is bigger, that's what loans are for etc etc. It also helps as stated that they are backed by a private equity firm, who has some rather deep pockets. I mean hell, they bought Petco for $4.6B.
 
Never had good luck with either one of those AV's. Have had to clean several machines with both of those(not same time) supposedly protecting the system.
 
Since they will at some point have to pay the loans back or at least pay the interest on the loans, I expect the Free offerings to become less useful and/or limited duration and basically a loss leader to encourage purchase of a subscription. And the layoff announcements are probably not far away.
 
DrLobotomy said:
Never had good luck with either one of those AV's. Have had to clean several machines with both of those(not same time) supposedly protecting the system.
Click to expand...

I don't particularly like AVG or Avast either, but I do have to say you can name any product on the market free or paid and I've seen it come into my shop with an infection. The products I hate the most are the ones that prevent me from running other programs to disinfect the machine while the unit is still infected with the malware it let through to begin with.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AK0tA
like this
I am wondering how this will affect AVG Enterprise editions and their licensing rates.... I need to renew mine in the next 4 months.
 
10+ years and 5+ computers with Avast and not a single issue ever. Not bad for free in my book.
 
Lakados said:
I am wondering how this will affect AVG Enterprise editions and their licensing rates.... I need to renew mine in the next 4 months.
Click to expand...

Doubt it will do much if it all goes through, even then, if changes do happen, it will be a while down the road before we see anything, something of this size can take a while.
 
Fond memories of Avast. When I first started out in IT repair back in high school, I'd always install Avast on client's computers to get rid of viruses on people's infected systems (back when it had a blue icon and it would announce at a frighteningly loud volume that the "virus database has been updated"). 99% of the time they had Norton or McAfee installed, which of course didn't do anything to protect them. I remember the scan for viruses at boot being extremely useful. Not sure how well Avast works these days as I've since moved onto BitDefender (paid version).

Never was fond of AVG, but good for Avast, I suppose.
 
If this goes through it might be time for me to try Avira. AVG and Ewido were both great until AVG bought Ewido and tried to integrate some of their anit-malware stuff into AVG. Detection rates went down, false positives went way up, it became resource intensive, false positives became harder to override, and worst of all it started deeply embedding itself in the OS like Norton.

Avast has already been getting bloated with a bunch of extra nonsense that periodically gets re-enabled after an update so I've been thinking about jumping ship for awhile anyway, any growing pains would be the final push.
 
Ebernanut said:
If this goes through it might be time for me to try Avira. AVG and Ewido were both great until AVG bought Ewido and tried to integrate some of their anit-malware stuff into AVG. Detection rates went down, false positives went way up, it became resource intensive, false positives became harder to override, and worst of all it started deeply embedding itself in the OS like Norton.

Avast has already been getting bloated with a bunch of extra nonsense that periodically gets re-enabled after an update so I've been thinking about jumping ship for awhile anyway, any growing pains would be the final push.
Click to expand...
I was in the same boat a few years ago. Both AVG and Avast got bloated so I tried Avira. But I was back on AVG / Avast in a few months. Avira let trough some nasty stuff. I still prefer an antivirus that gives a few false alarms, than one that doesn't detect everything.
 
This is a bad move. AVG is one of the worst AV's on the market. Might as well set the money on fire and dance around it.
 
I can't say what AVG is worth, but I recall the IRS raising Symantec's Taxes by 1 Billion because of an undervalued IP transfer between the US and Europe in about 2003.

So how much does a company have to be worth to have their taxes raised by $1 Billion over an error?

That was the day I realized that I truly have no grasp on just how much money is floating around out there in the world, as in I can not mentally conceptualize that amount. Like if you took all the wealth of the world and converted it into golf balls, how many shipping containers would they fill?
 
I never liked AVG and I have used avast on family computers with good success but it to has become bloatware. I really don't use anything on my system I just don't click strange emails or visit russian porn sites "unless they are in a sand box" research only.
Several years ago I stopped using major anti virus on my system and have not had one infection and less spam mail. I will run SpyBot once in a while just because I like those guys, but I have always felt the anti virus software market was a big fat scam.
 
My first computer was a Vic 20. I've never once had any AV program installed on any of my PC's and I have never once had a virus.

For all the family, friends and associates PC's which I have had the pleasure of cleaning after being infected, Norton's , AVG, Avast, and the million other AV programs out there have not once been effective in actually stopping a virus from infecting a computer or cleaning it off.

Anti Virus software is the biggest scam around.
 
AK0tA said:
I never liked AVG and I have used avast on family computers with good success but it to has become bloatware. I really don't use anything on my system I just don't click strange emails or visit russian porn sites "unless they are in a sand box" research only.
Several years ago I stopped using major anti virus on my system and have not had one infection and less spam mail. I will run SpyBot once in a while just because I like those guys, but I have always felt the anti virus software market was a big fat scam.
Click to expand...

Actually just recently Avast has a new updated called the nano where some of the AV process is in their cloud thus cutting out bloatware.
I really don't see much bloatware, a few popups sometimes you can just click off.
The software update scan section is very handy to know when things are outdated too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top