Softpedia is a software and tech news
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
based in
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
. It indexes, reviews and hosts downloadable software and reports news on technology and science topics. It is ranked as among of the top download portals on the internet.
History
Softpedia was started by two Romanian students, Bogdan Gheorghe and Cătălin Garmacea as softnews.ro. They realized that the Romanian audience was too small so they shifted the website to English and changed the domain to softpedia.com. The Romanian version was eventually discontinued because advertisers wanted a solely English website. The site got around 950,000 visits in 2005.
Softpedia's revenue in 2006 was 1.6 million euros, with 95% of the revenue coming from outside Romania.
In 2007, the Romanian website monitoring service Traffic.ro reported Softpedia as getting 3.5 million visits a week, mostly from outside of Romania. Softpedia chose to stop being monitored by Traffic.ro in June of that year.
Features
The site is owned by SoftNews NET SRL, a Romanian company. Softpedia features reviews written by its staff. Each review includes a 1-to-5-star rating, and often a public rating to which any of the site's visitors may contribute.
Products are organised in categories which visitors can sort according to most recent updates, number of downloads, or rating. Softpedia serves the most recent
binaries
A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files ...
and promotes software that is recently downloaded on its front page.
Free software and commercial software (and their free trials) can also be listed separately. Softpedia displays virtual awards for products free of
adware
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue by automatically displaying Online advertising, online advertisements in the user interface or on a screen presented during the installatio ...
,
spyware
Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...
and commercial tie-ins. Products that include these unrelated and/or unanticipated components and offers (which are known as
potentially unwanted program
A potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA) is software that a user may perceive as unwanted or unnecessary. It is used as a subjective tagging criterion by security and parental control products. Such software ma ...
s) are marked as such.
Softpedia does not repack software for distribution. It provides direct downloads of software in its
original provided form, links to
developers's downloads, or both. It hosts some products on its own servers in case they become unavailable from their developers' sites.
In December 2008, SoftNews NET SRL launched ''Autoevolution'', an automotive news and reference web site.
Safety
Softpedia has occasionally been used to distribute
malware
Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...
, such as a spyware program named OSX/OpinionSpy that was hidden in screensavers uploaded there along with
MacUpdate
MacUpdate is a Mac
Mac or MAC may refer to:
Common meanings
* Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc.
* Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth
* Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages
* Mc ...
and
VersionTracker
VersionTracker was a website that tracked software releases and versioning. It began as a Mac OS software tracker, eventually expanding into Mac OS X, iPhone, Microsoft Windows and Palm OS software.
VersionTracker did not host the majority of t ...
in 2010.
A 2018 report found that Softpedia was relatively safe compared to other download sites, with only 4 of 148 programs tested containing unwanted Internet Explorer add-ons and stating that Softpedia was less vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks due to serving more stand-alone installers that do not download executable files.
Softpedia displays virtual awards for products free of
adware
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue by automatically displaying Online advertising, online advertisements in the user interface or on a screen presented during the installatio ...
,
spyware
Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...
, and commercial tie-ins.
See also
*
Internet in Romania
References
{{Reflist
External links
Official website: Softpedia.comPolish website: Softpedia.pl
Information technology companies of Romania
Download websites
Internet properties established in 2001