back to article NortonLifeLock sniffs around Avast, announces 'advanced discussions' for acquisition

NortonLifeLock, the somewhat clunky moniker adopted by the former consumer business arm of the Symantec Corporation, has announced "advanced discussions" with rival Avast over a possible merger. "A combination of NortonLifeLock and Avast would bring together two companies with aligned visions, highly complementary business …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Aligned Visions

    I'm glad this always works in the tech industry.

  2. regadpellagru

    P. Norton portrait

    "In 1990 the company acquired Peter Norton Computing, taking on the latter's Norton-branded DOS utilities - and, of note, its security and antivirus products, which would eventually become the company's primary focus."

    It also acquired that famous P. Norton portrait that was on *every* single Norton security boxes, back then.

    No-one knew who that dude was. Weird marketing ....

  3. Adelio

    So that means that AVG free will disappear, or become full of adds, which means i will no longer use it.

    1. PTW

      Why would AVG do that because Norton buy Avast?

      1. Lon24

        Why does Red Hat screw up CentOS because IBM bought them?

        Because when you own, you rule. Norton probably consider their business model is better than Avast which is why they can buy them. And removing a free competitor may look good on the boardroom paper. AVG is owned by Avast and hence soon by Norton?

        Your non-use of AVG Free is no loss to Norton. People who think they must have something other than Defender may switch to a paid product. That's good news for the heirs of Peter.

        AVG Free was useful to Avast as a loss leader for a lesser known brand and, hopefully, lead to upgrades to a paid version. That would be history.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Avast bloat

      But didn't that already happen when Avast bloated it up with more nagware?

      Long gone is the nice and nifty free AVG product.

      But it is also a bit worrying that we have to acknowledge that Win10 is not XP when it comes to getting infected all the time. They just don't write viruses like they used to.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Last time I tried to use it it was already spewing a plethora of products advertising Avast instead of other vendors' products. Seeing as it is done with interrupting popups, I sent them packing and switched to Cylance. Even Avast's *paid* version does it, nagging you to *upgrade*. :(

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "highly complementary business profiles"

    Yes, let's absolutely merge together all anti-virus companies.

    After all, they all use the same principle : compare binary code against signatures, which has proved time and time again to not be enough.

    Then we can start talks about monopoly, and how we need to break them up again.

    The world goes round and round . . .

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A match made in HELL

    Both Norton and a "confidential collaberator" of Avast have been tricking user's into installing mobile versions of their software through scareware pop-under ads for several years.

    I have reported the infected sites and even the source code used by the "advertisers" to both Norton and Avast but I was ignored.

    And as the author has mentioned. Avast has become more of a threat to user's security and privacy than the malware they claim to protect against.

    A pox on both their houses.

  6. Claptrap314 Silver badge
    Devil

    Sounds like

    They deserve each other.

    But that's none of my business.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Both Norton and Avast anre unusably bloated for a workstation that does heavy programming.

    Besides, I'd rather stick with home grown Canadian technology, so I use Cylance from Blackberry. Very light weight, and it has caught a lot of stuff that Avast and Norton had ignored in the past. That results in a few false positives, but that is because it is behavior-analysis based, not signature based, so the; central database often doesn't have "its ok, don't worry" overrides in the central server's database.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      home grown Canadian technology, so I use Cylance from Blackberry

      Blackberry might have bought it, but it is initially Californian technology...

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