Avast

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Avast Software sro

logo
legal form Společnost s ručením omezeným
ISIN GB00BDD85M81
founding 1988
(as ALWIL software cooperative)
Seat Prague , Czech Republic
management Ondrej Vlcek ( CEO )
Number of employees over 1,700 (2019)
sales 873.1 million US $ (2019)
Branch software
Website www.avast.com
As of June 4, 2020

Avast Software sro is a Czech manufacturer of security software and utilities based in Prague . Via the holding company Avast PLC , the group of companies created around the software developer is listed on both the London and Prague exchanges . In Prague, the share was included in the PX Index.

The company goes back to a cooperative founded in Prague in 1988 under the name "Alwil", which was privatized in 1991 and renamed to its current name in 2010. In October 2016, Avast took over competitor AVG Technologies from Brno , which had only bought Norwegian Norman Safeground from Oslo two years earlier . Mid-2017 followed by the acquisition of Piriform , a mainly by its CCleaner known manufacturer of utilities from London .

history

1988–1991: foundation

In 1988, Pavel Baudiš, then a scientist at the Institute for Mathematical Machines in Prague, discovered the Viennavirus and wrote a program that could remove the virus. With his colleague Eduard Kučera, he founded the ALWIL Software Cooperative - at that time it was not possible to found a company instead of a cooperative .

1991–2009: Alwil Software

From 1989 the Velvet Revolution brought expanded entrepreneurial opportunities, which made it possible in 1991 to convert Alwil Software into a partnership. In 1995 Ondrej Vlček came to Alwil and wrote the first antivirus program for Windows 95 . In 1996 Avast Antivirus won the Virus Bulletin VB100 award . In 1997, Alwil Software licensed the Avast antivirus engine to McAfee after Pavel Baudiš rejected their takeover bid for his company. In the next seven years, the number of users rose to one million, mainly due to the free antivirus version for private users, which was released in 2001.

In 2005 Alwil and SanDisk entered into a partnership . At the end of 2006 Avast had a reach of 20 million users. It received the SC Awards in the categories Best Antivirus, Anti-Malware (Europe) and Readers' Choise (USA). In the following year, Alwil became a stock corporation and the number of registered Avast users reached 40 million. At that time, the company had only 38 employees.

2010–2016: Avast Software

Former logo of the company and the anti-virus programs offered under its product brand of the same name (until 2016)
Headquarters since 2016: the Enterprise building in Prague- Nusle

In 2009 the company had 100 million users and 100 employees. 2010 changed ALWIL Software named in Avast software and the investment firm Summit Partners has invested 100 million dollars in equity shares. Over the next two years, Avast released its Business Protection Line and Avast Free Mobile Security , which becomes the top rated security application in Google Play .

In 2013, Avast programs were installed on more than 200 million PCs , Macs, and Android devices. In the same year Avast Software took over the German company secure.me .

Since 2016: Avast Group

On July 7, 2016, Avast Software announced its plans to acquire a majority in the Netherlands and New York-listed holding company AVG Technologies NV . The holding owned the Czech AVG Technologies sro from Brno and the Norwegian Norman Safeground AS from Oslo, which it took over in November 2014 . For the manufacturer of the competing products AVG Antivirus , Avast offered a purchase price of about 1.3 billion US dollars. The offer to shareholders , based on $ 100 million in equity and $ 1.69 billion from three banks, was 33% above the market price .

AVG Technologies was founded in 1990 in Brno by Jan Gritzbach and Tomáš Hofer, initially under the name Grisoft . In 2005, the American chip manufacturer Intel invested 16 million US dollars in the Czech manufacturer of security solutions . The name Grisoft was changed to AVG Technologies and the head office was relocated to Amsterdam in the Netherlands . The company's shares have been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2012 under the ticker AVG.

On October 3, 2016, Avast Software announced in a press release that it had acquired a majority of 87.3% of the shares in AVG Technologies after the initial offering period had ended. Gary Kovacs, former CEO of AVG Technologies , left the company in December. By March 16, 2017, Avast also took over the remaining shares through a squeeze-out . Just as AVG Technologies had continued Norman software alongside their own products, Avast decided to continue the previously competing AVG Antivirus product line. The Norman antivirus product line then expired in the following months.

In July 2017, Avast Software announced the acquisition of Piriform Ltd. (Developer of CCleaner , among others) known. In May 2018, Avast went public on the London Stock Exchange and, with a listing at the lower end of the planned price range, reached a market value of 2.5 billion British pounds .

User data controversy

The lifestyle magazine Vice reported in early 2020 that a subsidiary of Avast was sending data collected from users about every search, every click and every purchase on every page ("Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.") To customers like Home Sell ​​Depot, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi and McKinsey. With the terms and conditions agreements, the users of the software consent to this use.

The news portal heise online reported shortly thereafter that Avast had been reading browser histories on a large scale for years and was selling the data to third-party companies. The press material advertises that it is the only company that can unlock closed systems ("walled gardens"). Following public criticism from Adblock Plus founder Wladimir Palant, Mozilla temporarily removed the Firefox add-ons from Avast and AVG from the add-on catalog in December 2019. After the development team had made adjustments and the company declared that the extensions would have to read the surfing history in order to be able to protect the user effectively against attacks, and the identification of a user was not recorded or saved, the add-ons were added to the catalog again .

subsidiary company

Logo of the subsidiary AVG

Products

General

Users of the free Avast Home (up to version 4) or Avast Free Antivirus (from version 5) must register after a test period of 30 days by entering their name and an email address. After that, you have to register again every 12 months in order to be able to continue using the product.

Avast Antivirus works as a resident provider, i.e. as a background process that scans processed data for malware . Due to the division into eight sub-processes (file system, mail, web protection, P2P, IM, network, script and behavior protection), these can be activated and deactivated individually as required. With AVG AntiVirus it is very similar with five protection areas (computer, web, identity, email and firewall).

Private customers

  • Avast Antivirus in the versions Free Antivirus , Premium Security (formerly: Premier ) and Ultimate (the versions Pro and Internet Security will no longer be developed)
  • Avast Secure Browser
  • Avast SecureLine VPN
  • Avast Driver Updater
  • Avast AntiTrack
  • Avast Cleanup Premium
  • Avast Passwords
  • Avast Battery Saver
  • Avast Omni (currently [June 2020] only available in the US, its online and offline parental controls are also available in a separate app, Avast Family Space , [for Android and iPhone], which is also available to users from Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain is offered)
  • Avast BreachGuard (protects personal information on the Internet from data leaks and from being captured by third parties. Currently [June 2020] the program is only offered to US users. It is only displayed on the Avast website if their region / language setting is set to " United States (English) "stands.)

Corporate solutions

  • Avast Endpoint Protection , Managed Workplace and CloudCare
  • AVG AntiVirus Business Edition , Internet Security Business Edition and File Server Business Edition

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c At a glance . In: Avast.com . Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  2. ↑ Leadership team. In: Avast.com. Retrieved June 6, 2020 .
  3. ↑ AVAST PLC . In: Companies House . Retrieved June 6, 2020
  4. ↑ AVAST . In: www.pse.cz ( Prague Stock Exchange ). Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  5. ^ A b Thomas Brewster: The Czech Cyber ​​Billionaire Who Built A Fortune On Free Software . In: Forbes , July 12, 2019. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  6. ↑ Axel Kannenberg: Antivirus software: Avast swallows AVG for 1.3 billion US dollars . In: Heise online , July 7, 2016. Accessed July 7, 2016
  7. ↑ Rodrigo Orihuela: Avast to Buy AVG for $ 1.3 Billion to Add Security Software. In: bloomberg.com . July 7, 2016, accessed August 10, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Jan Cienski: Anti-virus makers spring from an unexpected source. In: Financial Times . December 8, 2009, accessed April 1, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Andreas Donath: Intel invests in a Czech anti-virus company. In: golem.de . September 7, 2005, accessed October 2, 2016 .
  10. ↑ AVG Technologies sees IPO priced at $ 16- $ 18 apiece. Reuters , January 17, 2012, accessed August 19, 2013 .
  11. ↑ Stephan Ehrmann: Antivirus wedding: Avast completes takeover of AVG . In: Heise Security , October 1, 2016, accessed October 2, 2016
  12. ↑ Avast Software BV completes the squeeze-out process of minority shareholders of AVG Technologies BV . Company press release, March 16, 2016, accessed December 26, 2018
  13. ^ Vince Steckler: Avast welcomes Piriform, creator of CCleaner, to its team . In: Avast Blog, July 19, 2017, accessed September 12, 2017
  14. ↑ Antivirus maker Avast only accommodates stocks at minimum prices . In: Der Standard , May 9, 2018, accessed December 26, 2018
  15. ↑ Leos Rousek: Vstup Avastu se zapíše do history londýnské burzy. S akciemi původně české firmy půjde obchodovat ale i na pražské burze . In: Hospodářské noviny May 9, 2018, accessed June 6, 2020 (Czech).
  16. ↑ Joseph Cox: Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data . In: Vice (magazine) , January 27, 2020, accessed June 6, 2020.
  17. ↑ Eva-Maria Weiß: Avast Antivirus sells massive amounts of browser data from its users. In: heise online . January 28, 2020, accessed February 1, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Daniel Berger: Mozilla blocks Firefox add-ons from Avast and AVG . In: heise online , December 3, 2019, accessed on June 6, 2020.