Softonic fires 66% of its employees

by alexperezpaya • 12 years ago

19 9 12 years ago

lleims2• 12 years ago

Author of the article here. Just wanted to share a small update to this story.

Basically, on the day of the announcement of the layoffs, Softonic also announced that it was acquiring a SF-based company: http://novobrief.com/softonic-employees-layoffs/

bostonpete• 12 years ago

Is this linkbait? Seems strange to make a comment like that without mentioning the name of the other company.

wolffood• 12 years ago

Doesn't seem to be, as the article barely mentions any more information ("Silicon Valley firm specialized in scraping mobile app stores").

lleims2• 12 years ago

I don't think it is and I wouldn't mind editing the comment and getting rid of the link. Sorry.

Name of the acquired company hasn't been published yet because it hasn't been disclosed.

Sorry for the confusion.

hemancuso• 12 years ago

450 employees!!?? At least ten times what I would have ever guessed. I'd be surprised if mac update had more than 4.5 employees.

kifler• 12 years ago

Location: Spain. Is anyone really surprised?

alexperezpaya• 12 years ago

Things are changing here. The funny thing is that this company was an example of success for newspapers. We knew this was going to happen, this company has been installing garbage in computers for years, that's not a solid bussiness plan

drsintoma• 12 years ago

I remember the days when softonic was "the" place to go to discover new software. Then the whole site started to become shady with SMS for fast downloads and whatnot. At that point I stopped trusting the site completely, I guess I was not the only one.

tripzilch• 12 years ago

Sometimes the children I teach want to install the software we use at home. For some pieces of software, Softonic is on the first page of search results for the name of the software. It's usually half-way down (used to be more near the top, thankfully this changed).

I always warn them to never ever get their software from Softonic, but instead always make sure you end up on the official site for the computer program. Because on numerous occasions, downloads from Softonic came with "extras", a toolbar or changing your default search engine / homepage, or pop-ups telling that their computer is "at risk"[0].

I'm always very careful explaining this because the last thing I want to happen is some computer-clueless parent installing software for their super-smart kid, getting all sorts of ad- and spyware along the way.

So my point is, I'm a bit ambivalent? On the one hand, yes I absolutely think it's terrible that all these people will be losing their jobs. It's a pretty big hit (though not as big as what Opera did...). On the other hand, what this company was doing ... was it creating value for anyone?

[0] well, I won't lie to them and tell them that indeed it is, unfortunately there's absolutely nothing they can do about it (I usually tell them to at least get MSE, an adblocker and maybe Ghostery, but that does nothing to protect you from scammers, phishing, or governments).

Softonic fires 66% of its employees

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