Having over 100 million users has its downside—it means that users searching for Avast are also a prime target of scammers as well as legitimate companies trying to piggy-back on our name recognition. Every day we receive complaints from people that have been scammed. Some have been scammed into paying to download a free copy of Avast. Others have been tricked into buying a product they thought was Avast but was not. This happens in many different ways but at the core is the greatest scourge of the internet—socially engineered scams and deceptions. Thieves and even legitimate companies are masters at taking advantage of people’s natural penchant to trust others. Some scams are quite blatant and most of us would consider them theft or cheating. Others are much less obvious and may even be considered zealous marketing and selling. One finds such deceptions in search results, on download sites, and even in internet domain names. Read more…
If you have seen the new Avast website (available only in English and French right now) or products, you have surely seen our new logo:
Read more…
Today is the big day—the day we (and many of you) have been waiting for—we are starting the release of the Version 5.0 products today. This is a pretty complicated roll-out so we are staging it. Today we will be releasing the new products (and the new website) in English and French. Over the next 10 days or so, we will be releasing the products and website in additional languages (German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, and possibly Korean, and Arabic). Other languages will then be added as we have them available.
Three products (Free Antivirus, Pro Antivirus, and Internet Security) and a new website are being released today. Even though we have expanded our product portfolio, our philosophy of having and promoting a top-notch free antivirus is paramount. This philosophy has enabled us to achieve 100 million users and we are continuing it. As you read through our new website and launch information, you will see that not only is the new free product easier to use and more visually appealing than the old product, it provides even more security protection. And it is still free and free from annoying pop-ups and requests for money.
These products are not minor updates from the existing products. They are all new. Some of the changes—such as the new user interface—are obvious. Some are not obvious at all (such as the new scanning engine). All-in-all we think they are a vast improvement from the current products—modern, light, fast, and very effective. For details, see the product detail pages on the new website. Read more…
Virus Bulletin, one of the most respected reviewers of security products, wrote a very detailed review of the Avast 5.0 beta products in their January issue (http://www.virusbtn.com/files/Avast-Jan2010.pdf). This is a lengthy review but to me the best line was their summation of the new free product: “the free version being available to all without charge is nothing short of a miracle”. There was also a review of it in the recent AV-Comparatives test of performance/system impact. The product scored the highest rating: A+.
With the new Free Version 5.0, we attempted (and we think succeeded) to raise the bar on free security products. We decided that our new free product needed to be the best antivirus product in the world—not just the best free product. We think we have succeeded, or come darn close. Now you the users (and of course the reviewers) can let us know…. Read more…
As we get ready to launch our new Avast! Free Antivirus Version 5, we are proud to announce that Google has chosen this product for inclusion in Google Pack. Google Pack is a package of free software that Google assembles and distributes to its users around the world. Google Pack includes Avast for the following languages: French, German, Italian, Czech, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Polish. Read more…
We did it. We reached the 100 million user milestone at 10:59 Tuesday morning. We have been anticipating this event all year. We started the year with about 70 million users. We had a little celebration and promotion for 75 million users. Then we watched 80 million and 90 million go by. By October it was clear that we would cross 100 million in December. So, on the morning of 8 December all of our staff crowded around a large monitor to watch the registration counter tick upwards to 100 million. We had a little self-induced tension in the event—just 30 seconds before the 100 million mark, someone hit a button on a remote control that switched the display away from the count—some seconds of mad scramble restored the picture. Read more…
First, I want to thank everyone that left comments on my previous blog entry and on Ondrej’s forum entry. We appreciate all the comments—positive and negative. And, if you are still having problems, please do contact our support and they can help you. You can reach them via http://support.avast.com/index.php?languageid=1&group=eng. From that page you can get help on our forum—just post a question and someone (an avast employee or a community member) will help you. Or send a trouble ticket directly to our support staff.
As I had promised in the earlier post, I am giving an update on steps we are putting in place to protect against such an occurrence again in the future. Three key elements of the current process are that: Read more…
You may have heard that we released a virus database update early Thursday morning (or Wednesday night depending on the time zone). We are deeply sorry for releasing this update and the trouble it caused you. Of the users that received the update, most encountered no problems, some encountered minor issues, and some had significant problems.
I apologize to each and every one of you—I realize that security is fundamentally about trust and you have to trust your security provider. We made a mistake here and it won’t happen again. Read more…
As we get close to our launch date for our new Avast! Free Antivirus, version 5 we have an exciting new agreement with Google to announce. Starting in mid-November, we will be giving our new users an option to install Google Chrome when installing Avast. And to be clear here since I think some readers were reading too much into this entry. We are not forcing Chrome on users. It is entirely up to the user–to download/install is entirely up to the user and nothing is hidden.
Personally, I think Google Chrome is an exciting new browser. As you can see below it is very clean—a single menu bar and a combined search/url entry window. It also launches very fast, its source code is open source, and most important for Avast users, it has some real neat features that complement the Avast security. You can read more about it here: http://www.google.com/chrome?hl=en. Read more…
I know that many of our users have been asking this question for quite a while. We can now give the answer—after the holidays and very early in 2010. We will announce the specific date shortly before the actual release.
On Saturday finished the last major milestone before the general release when we released the public beta of the Version 5 Internet Security (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51331.0). Additionally the beta of the new Free AntiVirus (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51330.0) has now been out for a couple of months and has about 300,000 users. If you have not yet tried one of these products, I encourage you to do so and think you will be very impressed. We have loaded all three new products with lots of features. And we have actually increased the capabilities of the free product. Here is what we will now have: Read more…