Avg Acquires Israeli Photo-Management Startup Myroll, Plans To Integrate The Technologies

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Israeli photo-management startup MyRoll has been acquired by AVG Technologies, the Czech company behind the popular security software of the same name. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded out of Tel Aviv in 2012 initially as Flayvr, MyRoll raised $2 million in funding last year and pivoted to become an intelligent gallery app that surfaces all your best photos and videos. The app automatically sorts your camera roll into “sharable moments”.

The startup launched a new standalone app back in February called Gallery Doctor, which identifies all your bad or duplicate photos to help free up storage on your device. Available only for Android at first, it finally landed on iOS this summer.

Now MyRoll will be joining AVG’s new Mobile Center of Excellence, which opened in June, which means the MyRoll folks won’t have too far to travel, as AVG’s new facility also happens to be based in Tel Aviv.

Both the MyRoll and Gallery Doctor apps will continue as they are for the time-being, though the company says it will be integrating its technology into AVG products “in the near future.” Reading between the lines here, this likely means that the standalone apps will be shuttered.

 

Indeed, there most certainly is something in the air in Israel. Earlier this week, Microsoft confirmed it had acquired cyber security firm Secure Islands, representing Microsoft’s fifth Israeli acquisition of the year. Looking further back, other notable Israeli acquisitions include Waze by Google, Onavo by Facebook, CloudOn by Dropbox, and SlickLogin by Google.

It may seem like an odd acquisition by AVG, a brand synonymous with desktop and mobile security apps. But the company already offers a range of related services, including AVG Cleaner for Android and Mac which helps clean up the memory on your devices to free up space. So MyRoll’s smart algorithm-based technology, as you’ll find in Gallery Doctor, will actually fit in rather well at AVG