Google suggest proves that a lot of people want Norton, McAffee, and AVG off their PCs

AVG - Not anything to do with its removal after yet another bout of malware, and a move to a better product?

since AVG started installing a browser toolbar and a more than questionable linkscanner, their software is outright malicious in my books.

not overly surprised that folks just want to get rid of it :)

Norton has really cleaned up its act with NAV 2009. Small installer....light on resources...and it seems to be rated very well in independent tests of AV suites. I used Norton many years ago, but stopped when it became so friggin' bloated a few years ago. I tried it on my laptop and am very impressed.

Microsoft Security Essentials has become my new standard, had to believe it has anything to do with Microsoft defender or OneCare

I think this has to do as well with a known problem with AVG not uninstalling properly. Lots of users will put AVG on a PC to "have something" and then when they get Kaspersky or whatever to upgrade to, AVG won't come off properly.

A lot of my AVG woes have been about uninstalling and reinstalling the product, but I've also been getting a fair amount of complaints about AVG being a horrid on system resources, particularly on the older, XP-era machines.

I myself am not happy with it, either, and that doesn't even count LinkScanner. While all AVs have an impact on performance, some are better about it than others.

I stopped using AVG this year, after being loyal to it for the last 6 or so.

It really kills systems. If you don't believe me, take a fresh netbook, reboot it a couple of times to get a good "feel", then install AVG. Your effective boot time (time from pressing power button to being able to actually USE the computer) will close to double.

Sure, on most PC's you won't see this kind of impact. But why keep AVG around when there are lighter, faster alternatives that offer the same protection?

I switched to Avast. I know the GUI is a lot more frilly and fluffy than necessary, and that kept me away for a long time. But Avast barely makes a dent in my system performance.

I also tried Avira, but I didn't like the fact that all it does is try to get you to purchase the "full" version (also like AVG... another reason I dumped it).

Avira's nag screen can be subdued easily via GPE, firewall or some little application, Brad was posting recently (just can't think of the name. it wasn't called NagMeNot, or was it? :)

It has nothing to do with removing AVG, or Norton. Those are "Virus REMOVAL tools."

Aside from them advertising that they REMOVE viruses, if people use the keywords "Program Remove Virus," they'll most often click the avg link, or the norton link, and that information will be sent off to Google's secret statistics and "personal data analysis" department, via their top secret spy satellites.

They aren't looking for ways to remove AVG, most of the time... they are looking up AVG to remove malware.

On that note, you forget that Google is not intelligent. It doesn't even have any Artificial Intelligence. Google is an indexing service much like every other search engine in the web. It crawls the web, looking for keywords, namely in the meta tags of most websites. It then archives that little data, and users punch in keywords to have the data displayed. That's why if you search "How can I show hidden files?", it will most often then not, show you a page with information about the two main keywords, "Hidden, Files." The words "How, Can, and I" are automatically disregarded, unless you type the query with quotations. However, you know how Google works, just a reminder.

For what its worth, IBM Global Services forbids AVG antivirus for all employees and contractors. In case anyone is wondering, that's the only AV they forbid.

^^^^^^^ maybe because AVG free is for private use only