Norton silently becoming Avast!?

[NON]

A topic on the Japanese forum and some local BBS topics suggests that Norton is now becoming almost identical software to Avast, like AVG does.


Point 1: Process name
According to the forum topic, a user claiming using Norton has these processes:

AvDump.exe, aswEngSrv.exe, afwServ.exe, VpnSvc.exe, aswidsagent.exe, NortonSvc.exe, nllToolsSvc.exe, NortonUI.exe

And these process names matches with Avast's:

AvDump.exe, aswEngSrv.exe, afwServ.exe, VpnSvc.exe, aswidsagent.exe, AvastSvc.exe, aswToolsSvc.exe, AvastUI.exe

Naming difference of asw/nll could be interpreted as follows: asw could means Avast Software, while nll means NortonLifeLock


Point 2: Version schema
A post of BBS says their latest version of Norton has a version number of "24.7.9311.859",  that matches with Avast's.
Previously, they (Norton) uses following version schema: "22.24.7.8", that is different with Avast's.


Point 3: Smart scan
A user claimed that new version of Norton suggests to buy something for "Advanced issues" after running "Smart scan" (like Avast does), while previous version does not.


Point 4: Mail signature
The original issue with the OP of the topic is, their mail has signature like "Secured by Avast" like Avast does, while they don't have Avast installed.



I never imagined this would happen. Rather, I thought it would be the opposite (although not for my taste).
If that's true, it's quite interesting to see Norton becoming Avast, but also understandable as Avast has far more user-base than Norton has.
I hope these migrations go well and also contribute to its Quality, as almost all Norton users are paid ones.

[DavidR]

I'm not too surprised by that - you don't pay out a lot money if you haven't got good reason.  Norton, from days long ago wasn't thought to be anything more than a pain in the rear.

Companies generally buy out companies because they have something that they haven't got and a revamp of your own product must be high on the list.  As you say many thought this would be Avast absorbed into Norton, but that didn't happen. Norton has taken the better bits and incorporated (not invisibly) them into Norton.

But then along came Gen Digital and swallowed that as well, but I'm unsure if they are anything than a big shell:

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