Big Changes at WinZip

There are big changes ahead for one of the oldest programs out there. The same team who turned Corel around has bought the company and plans some fairly important changes. They intend to reinforce the message that WinZip is, after all, shareware. They also intend to add value for people who have paid for a license. It all sounds onderful,
but like everything else, we’ll have to wait and see what their plans are.

Is it possible to make money off a product that millions have downloaded for free? The new owners of WinZip Computing hope so.

WinZip, which specializes in software that compresses large files for storage or mailing, has been bought by turnaround investor Vector Capital.

For years, WinZip’s eponymous utility has been one of the most popular shareware programs on the Web. More than 140 million people have downloaded the program, and it’s downloaded for free about 500,000 times a week, said Chris Nicholson, a partner at Vector.

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