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uTorrent gives in to outrage, ads to be "optional"

uTorrent gives in to outrage, ads to be "optional"

By KS Sandhya Iyer | Updated: 16 August 2012 18:07 IST

BitTorrent, the company behind the popular file sharing technology and the uTorrent client made an announcement last week saying that it is planning to introduce ads with uTorrent.

The ads would take the form of promoted content or torrents that users could see highlighted at the top of their torrents list. The company had requested users to post their opinions regarding the announcement. As expected, what followed was an almost unanimous outcry of furious users venting their anguish on the announcement's forum thread.

"An absolute disgrace. uTorrent used to be an excellent lightweight client with some great features, now its just a bloated and buggy piece of crap which is now going to be bundled with adware," posted a user.

The good news is that BitTorrent took serious notice of many such user comments and decided to give its earlier announcement a second thought. Now the P2P site has announced that these ads will be optional. Those annoyed can simply choose to disable them.

BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker said, "We've long contemplated an opt-out mechanism for the new offers and advertisements we will be experimenting with. Given all that's been said here, we've decided to release the initial version with an opt-out mechanism. Users should have the choice to opt-out, and we will provide them with ways to do so."

He further said that they wanted to invest the money generated from these ads to fuel new technology development and improve the file sharing service rather than just merely cashing in on all the moolah.

Further, there is good news for those who've complained there favourite BitTorrent client has become too bloated, as the company is also planning to consider a lighter version of uTorrent. Nothing official about it yet.

uTorrent has seen a rapid growth in its active monthly users which has increased five times to 125 million users in less than 4 years. Sponsored torrents are likely to give the company an opportunity for further future expansion.

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