Google pack now includes Avast Anti-Virus
Well this one has slipped under the radar. Google has started to bundle the popular anti-virus solution with it’s Pack of other programs in France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain, Russia, Portugal and Poland.
The latest Avast product, Free Anti-Virus Version 5, is the program of choice and it’s quite a coup for Avast. In recent years they’ve established themselves as very accomplished anti-virus publishers and we actually use their Professional small business variant in our own offices. It has kept our SBS server trouble free in the 2 years since we switched to Avast and we’ve also recommended it to a good few clients too.
Avast has been offering Chrome as a browser to install with it’s software for a while now and it would appear their loyalty is being rewarded. The potential for users to choose the free solution with Google Pack and then upgrade to a higher paid-for version has got to be worth it for Avast – not to mention the sheer publicity value of being associated as a partner of one of the biggest buzz word companies in the world.
Why not all countries?
Google rarely rolls out new additions to it’s Pack globally.
The countries chosen given it a good test bed to see what the demand for download is like and you can then expect it to become available in the much bigger markets of Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Why Avast?
Well other than their loyalty and support for Chrome, Avast have made a very good name for themselves with some incredibly capable and competitively priced products. The incidences of problems with their software is very low and perhaps just as importantly the overhead it places on PC’s is low by most competitor product standards.
