Announced back in February, antivirus maker AVG has today officially launched AVG LiveKive, a service similar to Dropbox. LiveKive offers to automatically sync files from your PC or Mac to the cloud, making them accessible to any Web-enabled device, including Android and iOS devices. For starters, AVG is offering 5GB storage for free, similar to direct competitors Box.net and Sugarsync, but unlike Dropbox's 2GB. For heavy users, the storage size can be upgraded at $49.99 per year for 25GB or $79.99 per year for unlimited storage, significantly cheaper than other competitor's pricing. At this point, it seems that AVG LiveKive is not ready for international users. Visiting the product page from Malaysia, I am greeted this message—"We're sorry, AVG LiveKive is not yet available in your region," followed by an email form to register my interest. But for the sake of verifying SmallCloudBuilder's claim that AVG LiveKive is really just Spideroak with AVG's logo on it, I have decided to sign up and download the client from AVG's U.S. website. As expected, the interface is strikingly similar to that of Spideroak. In fact, they are totally identical as shown in the screenshot. If you watch the introduction video below, AVG's Stephen Simpson mentioned about zero knowledge privacy policy at 2:30. This is the exact term that Spideroak describe their privacy policy too. If that is not convincing enough, SmallCloudBuilder also reported that the AVG LiveKive client uses the term "Roomkey" for password, which is exactly the term used by Spideroak. Coincidence? Your call. But it doesn't really matter whether or not AVG is riding on SpiderOak Open License. After all, AVG LiveKive is selling more storage for less dollars than Spideroak itself.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAG0Ju5Rxf8&w=560&h=349]