Avast and Piriform are two very well-known names in the PC world and they've both even made a splash in the Android universe (for better or for worse). But now the London-based company behind the beloved CCleaner has been swallowed by Avast in a full acquisition.
It should be noted that Avast claims that it will not touch CCleaner, instead maintaining that whole suite of products — including the Android stuff. Avast's other optimization software (e.g. Cleanup and AVG Tune-Up) will also remain alive. As part of this transition, the whole team at Piriform will join its new owner's consumer business unit.
As a very long-time fan of CCleaner, and a former user of Avast Antivirus, this news hits close to home. I'm hoping for the best outcome.
PRESS RELEASE
REDWOOD CITY, California--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Avast, the global leader in digital security products, today announced that it has acquired Piriform, the leading provider of device performance optimization software. Founded and based in London, UK, Piriform’s flagship product, CCleaner, speeds up PCs and smartphones by intelligently removing junk and improving the performance of computers and phones.
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.
“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,” said Vince Steckler, CEO of Avast. “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.”
The Piriform team will be a part of the Avast consumer business unit, and report to Ondrej Vlcek, Avast CTO and EVP & GM, Consumer.
