Companies do it all the time. Seems really silly to continue to develop two AV programs under two different brands.
Well, silly. Despite what you're saying, the AVG user base is still very strong (especially in English speaking countries) and we see no point in forcing people to move to Avast. It's like if Coca-Cola bought Pepsi and decided to migrate all Pepsi customers to Coke -- doable, but not necessarily wise. There's a lot of nuance and personal biases that make this risky.
Long term, we may end up with one brand only but it's definitely not something we think can be done quickly. The current view is that 1-2 years would be a minimum, assuming everything went smoothly.
This new AVG merged with avast! is nice. Apart from Zen garbage which I can't stand it AT ALL, avast! has done more to AVG GUI than they have in last few years. In fact, (again, apart from Zen part) I actually consider new AVG's interface superior to avast!'s new GUI.
Super, happy to hear that. I think the team has done a very good job with the new AVG GUI (especially given the short time frame), although I personally still prefer the new Avast Nitro UI (especially with the latest changes that you haven't seen yet). They are both nice.
But, frankly, UI is just the wrapping and I'm sure you will agree that what
really matters is what's inside. And that's where things start to get really interesting. Now, it's a bit awkward to talk about it just now as some of the key features are still missing from the engine (such as the AVG code emulator, which, in my view, is a real gold nugget) but in some 4-6 weeks from today, we should have everything integrated. We're pulling all the stops and integrating the tech as fast as we can now...
But for the love of god, give users option to install new AVG without Zen launcher component. Or at least default to it, but allow users to remove it afterwards.
Well... Zen has been an integral part of AVG for a few years now, and is staying. We plan to integrate it to the main AV UI, but that will come later -- as, again, we feel we need to focus on the engine first.
I already managed to break this stupid Zen component.
The "Free Antivirus" has changed to "Internet Security" and now I can't access ANY of the antivirus controls or settings. WHAT!? All I did was change the device icon from laptop to desktop. And now it's broken.
I think that's a bug and the team will undoubtedly be interested in exact steps to reproduce it. Can you help?
Just installed it on my laptop and I love it's UI much more than Avast's in latest Beta but I hate Zen garbage too. Why do I need to run Zen to get access to antivirus part?
Glad to hear you like new AVG UI. For Zen, please see above. We have some plans, but we will first release a version that addresses the internals and only then start making changes to Zen etc.
in a way i kind of agree why not send out notifications to avg users that they will all be merged over to avast and then have one universal product. i have seen many companies try to run with the multiple branding thing in all different fields not just av's and usually either one fails or both tend to suffer. i would love to see a brand new product that takes each of the best of both and make one ultimate av.
We think the dual-brand strategy is the right approach for now. There's just too much risk in trying to migrate tens of millions of users from one brand to another. We will be revisiting this later.
Thanks, guys.
Vlk