What does the future hold for Ad-Aware?

Much has changed over the years with spyware. The word spyware has been wrapped up into a single word (malware or viruses) by many companies and almost every anti-virus company out there also attempts to track and remove malware. Ad-Aware, the ones who originally took on the anti-spyware game many years ago and were considered the “must have” app have gone into a downhill spiral over the past five years and recently sold the company to Solaria. Rumor has it that the company could have sold for as little as a couple million dollars.

As many of you know, Majorgeeks stopped listing Ad-Aware as a “pick” some years ago as we watched the quality of the company slip over the years. While the program is still effective, it can’t stand up to the new generation of anti-spyware applications including Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Superantispyware and IOBit Malware Fighter.

The Register has a new article online looking as deep as they could into the sale of Lavasoft:
“Lavasoft, originally based in Sweden, was purchased by an investment fund called Solaria in January, but no other holdings can be found for Solaria. In fact, the only ties that Solaria has are to the founders of Upclick, an affiliate marketing company. The founders of this company have also founded companies that sold online porn, reskinned peer-to-peer filesharing software, and allegedly "skimmed" online sales, charging customers for software that they did not order.

Solaria bought Lavasoft on 18 January 2011. Its listing in Businessweek reveals that it began operating as a subsidiary of Lulu Software after the acquisition, and is now also known as LVS Software. Lulu Software is registered as 7270356 Canada Inc in Montreal (4-page PDF/163KB).”

What does this mean for you? We don’t know but we wouldn’t download it. We have seen rogue companies go good and good companies go rogue but we have to wait this one out. It’s too soon to tell and it does not look promising.