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Technology

Anti-Virus Program The Most Widely Downloaded This Year

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition was the most widely downloaded software in 2010 according to CNET. It was downloaded over 83 million times at CNET.com last year.

It is odd that free PC security software would be more popular than products from industry leaders like McAfee and Symantec. They are, at least in the eyes  of most PC protection experts, the state of the art products.

Any analysis that takes a complete look at the PC protection business knows that antivirus software, like most other software, may be affordable to consumers in developed nations. But the real growth in computer use in in places like China and other large nations in the developing and third world. It is hard to come by the money to pay for a Norton protection program. There is particularly true when one that is considered adequate is available at no cost.

The AVG download numbers show a trend that is one of the great enemies of companies which make effective and paid software. The better the free products get, the more pressure it puts on paid ones. Free software is often built by legions of programmers who communicate via e-mail and message boards. It may not make sense to large commercial enterprises but not everyone who builds a service does so for money.

As proof of the competition that free software like AVG poses, the product get an extremely high ratings from CNET. It is higher, in fact, than that of a number of the more well-regarded paid programs.

The democratization of the internet had become more and more frequently the enemy of premium content which includes both news and entertainment, and premium tools. The AVG data shows just how far the evolution of the world wide web has come

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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