AVG Launches Dropbox Rival: Sync, Backup And Share Files In The Cloud

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Security software juggernaut AVG this morning announced a brand new service that lets users store, sync and share files in the cloud from a variety of channels and devices.

Dubbed Livekive, the solution sounds extremely familiar to anyone who’s ever used similar services like Dropbox or Box.net (yes, I’m aware there are plenty more competitors).

Livekive comes with automated syncing functionality, which works on both Apple and Microsoft platforms. All (encrypted) data can be accessed and shared from any web-enabled device, including Android, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.

AVG offers Livekive users three tiers of storage options: there’s a free 5GB offering and two paid versions, providing either 25GB for $49.99 per year or ‘unlimited’ storage (the company’s fair usage policy applies) for $79.99 per year.

For you comparion, Dropbox offers 2GB free of charge, and you can get 50GB of storage for $99 per year year or 100GB for $199 per year. Box.net offers 5GB of free storage and lets you upgrade to a premium version that offers 500GB of storage for $15 per month ($180 per year).

AVG was originally founded back in 1991 and just two weeks ago announced a $235 million financing deal. The company has a vast user base to be reckoned with: AVG says it currently protects more than 110 million consumers and small businesses from viruses, spam, cyber-scams and hackers on the Internet.

Company: AVG Technologies
Website: avg.com
Launch Date: 1991
IPO: February 2, 2012, NYSE:AVG

AVG Technologies is a global leader in security software, protecting more than 110 million consumers and small business computer users in 167 countries. Headquartered in Amsterdam, AVG is the fourth largest vendor of anti-virus software and employs close to 500 people worldwide with corporate offices in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Germany. AVG has nearly two decades of experience in combating cyber crime and operates one of the world’s most advanced laboratories for detecting, pre-empting and...

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Company: Dropbox
Website: dropbox.com
Launch Date: June 1, 2007
Funding: $257M

Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Frustrated by working from multiple computers, Drew was inspired to create a service that would let people bring all their files anywhere, with no need to email around attachments. Drew created a demo of Dropbox and showed it to fellow MIT student Arash Ferdowsi, who dropped out with only one semester left to help make Dropbox a reality. Guiding their decisions was a relentless focus on crafting a...

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Company: Box
Website: box.com
Launch Date: 2005
Funding: $284M

After starting as a college business project in 2005, Box was officially launched in March of 2006 with the vision of connecting people, devices and networks. Box provides more than 8 million users with secure cloud content management and collaboration. They say their platform “allows personal and commercial content to be accessible, sharable, and storable in any format from anywhere”.

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