Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, announced that his company would be finalizing an acquisition of µTorrent today.
“Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent AB have decided to join forces,” Cohen wrote in his blog. “BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent’s exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent’s efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent’s expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.”
The move will bring quite a few torrent users over to BitTorrent. News site TorrentFreak estimates that buying uTorrent, will bring BitTorrent nearly 50 percent of torrent users.
“What does this mean for the µTorrent community?” wrote Cohen. “Not much, at least not at first. The intention is to maintain the website as it is, and keep the forums and community active. Moving forward behind the scenes, we will continue to develop µTorrent and will be using the codebase in other applications, especially ones where a fast, lightweight implementation is more suitable, such as embedded systems on TVs, cell phones, and other non-PC platforms.”
The acquisition price has not yet been disclosed.
Great news BitTorrent rocks!
Natalia, this is muy bueno. Great news. Please keep us posted on the acquisition price.
µTorrent is great client for Windows and it apparently works well on Linux using WINE as well. Azureus is way too bloated, BitComet is rather flaky, and the original BitTorrent client generally just sucks.
µTorrent is extremely lightweight and very efficient in terms of resource usage.
µTorrent is a pretty good program, this will definitely help BitTorrent move into new revenue streams with a better client.
“exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community”
Natali – when I start my online social networking site, I’m definitely going to have you review it. You make everything sound good.
Now, if only I could figure out how to get a full download of anything without everyone I’m connected to logging out halfway through the download … I must only try downloading stuff seeded by AOL users
I am one of the happiest person , who is only more happy on hearing this news .
No client , until now can beat the performance of utorrent and the creator himself has seen this to join forces .
“If u cant beat em , join em . ”
I sure hope BT won’t do anything to ruin my favourite client µTorrent.
I guess that means i’m switching to Azureus!
What a sad day for a great program. I will promptly be switching to something else…god only knows what though. This really is sad.
It’s funny reading the reactions here vs the utorrent forums (the “blog” link above) – everyone there is pissed because they know Cohen has made distribution deals with the MPAA, and “scene” people are super mega anti **AA. It’s really embarrassing to read actually, I would be ashamed to have those types of people as “fans” of my software.
I say congrats to the creator of uTorrent – he just made a nice wad of cash for his hard work. uTorrent has been my torrent program of choice since the first time I tried it well over a year ago. He deserves some reward.
Arrrgh! I fear uTorrent will be ruined.
Great for the uTorrent guys. I guess we’ll have to see how it is for the uTorrent users. Personally, my hopes aren’t high. Acquisitions fall victim to the strategy of the acquiring company.
Wow Micheal, wow.
You do nothing but bark about how bad PayPerPost is, but yet, I come to your site tonight and I see a 50% increase in space dedicated to ads.
And worse yet, these ads blink, and are animated and are just annoying. So you bark about how it’s bad to get paid to post on a blog about something, but what are you doing? You are getting paid to post on this blog.
Sure it may be a bit different, but the essentials are the same. You are receiving a monetary amount to continue to post on your blog.
I’m not saying stop, but I think you’ve over done it this time with these new ads. Seriously.
Azureus is the one I really enjoy.
http://www.ezecho.com
Wow, and it seems like it was only yesterday when he was begging for donations to his work.
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that you haven’t said a word about ReviewMe, a competitor to PayPerPost.
I wonder why that may be? They are a well-funded, managed startup that is operated by ……….. dun dun dunnnnn Text-Link-Ads..
Where have I seen a Text-Link-Ads ad lately? Oh yea, on this blog. So is the $10k a month more important to you than everything you want us to believe you believe in?
I think so. And I wouldn’t have a problem if you didn’t slam PPP and act like you have the “moral” high-ground that you seem to think you have the right to.
It’s ok for you, but it’s not ok for others, I get it.
And I am in no-way connected with PPP and I did not get paid to post this. I’m clean.
uTorrent is the best and easiest torrent program to use on the web, and I hope Bittorrent doesn’t do anything to mess it up.
bitTorrent technology is dead. If any of you guys actually did anything with p2p besides steal, then you’d realize something like this http://www.tamago.us
get fucking paid to consume instead of following retards like Bram. All p2p platforms use multiple host to download files…
Bad news,
This looks promising as an alternative (400kb)
http://www.bina....com/halite.php
Wish he marriage a happy honeymoon.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
This is going to destroy uTorrent, a free brilliant application is going to commercialised, looks like im going to have to find a new bittorrent application
i hate it when free applications that are truly brilliant get dropped into the commercial industry! its abit like christmas, valentines day and the rest its all about getting more money from the consumer and it sucks!
lemon obrien
Stop with the tamgo spam
Your client has a horrible UI ,
Your bussiness model follows a simmilar model to Peer Impact who has the big content deals and a strong Intelectual property portfolio (better get a good lawyer).
Bittorent Inc was smart buying uTorrent because Bram realises the future is embeding the technology into devices .uTorrent’s small codebase provides that small footprint .
Hoping to see a linux version of uTorrent……..
“What does this mean for the µTorrent community?”
I don’t care for either community – I’m sellfish and I’m not a user of either of them – so can anyone tell me ,,What does this mean for me?”
I agree with Adam Livesley!
Reading this entry reminded me of Winamp. It was a good music player, until AOL came along! Now it gets useless stuff added to it, which is of no use!
I have a feeling that the same will happen to utorrent. Like a “dashboard” to see what movies are ‘hot’, download some clips, etc. I hate that, and I’m sure others do as well!
It’s a big shame!
I agree with Adam Livesley! & Soroush.