Hello, thanks for everyone's responses. It's about time I finally got some more word about the question of interest, though.
Regarding your question why we cooperate with CNET on updating the software:
1. we do not get any money for this
I know you don't. CBS does not fund anyone who puts their installer on CNET/Download.com unless there's some mutual partnership between Avast and CBS....which I doubt there's any.
2. the main motivation is to make the updating as easy as possible (one big button) and some pages are really complicated (e.g. java.com).
I wasn't aware that the update button in the Avast maintenance panel linked to an automatically run installer downloaded from CNET, I just assumed it pulled the installer from the Avast! website. Additionally, I don't think it's worth comparing Avast with Java. Java's update mechanism is a mess because, well, it's Java. You
can't compare the installation of some dusty, dying plug-in (hopefully, Java is so ancient now I don't see why it's even used anymore (don't say Minecraft that's a dumb excuse)) with an application....anyway,
3. we would also like to unify the user experience as much as possible, not sending users to java.com then winrar.com etc..
Uhm.......well yeah. That's why the update button exists on Avast's maintenance panel...still doesn't help me understand why CNET is used as the download distribution
4. some software producers started blocking us due to the high traffic, and CNET has the power to sustain the demand of our 180M userbase ;-)
180M userbase or 300K userbase, regardless of the amount of people who use Avast, I don't think it should necessitate using CNET. Like I said, CNET may have the servers, but they have their ways into funding it, and one of the ways to do it is by wrapping "crapware" with the main product. Considering that the only item in interest of being downloaded is the setup.exe file, there should be a more effective means of distributing the software. Granted, if the availability of the installer was only on avast's main site, I would see why it would cause for a lot of traffic. I'm not saying the installer shouldn't be distributed to other places to download, I'm saying that there are better places to get it distributed.
Thankfully those other venues do exist, such as FileHippo. It's a shame that most people are unaware of it, and blindly redirect their cursors into CNET.
I trust Avast enough to keep their installers free of any other stuff, but still, I don't quite see the use of CNET all that justified. It might just be my naivety talking, and there could be more to why CNET's being used, which I hope I'll be able to know, because so far I'm not convinced why avast! points the download button to that ad-ridden site.