SweetLabs is a software distribution company.

Company overview

Based in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

and

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, SweetLabs has raised $21.5 million in venture capital from

Bessemer Venture Partners Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London. Bessemer ...

, Google Ventures, Intel Capital, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

Apps services

The company supplies products for software developers, advertisers, consumers, and manufacturers (“OEMs”) of Android-operated devices and Microsoft Windows-based devices and personal computers. In May 2014, SweetLabs released the App Install Platform, cloud-based and client-side services which include an App Ad Server that gives OEMs the ability to customize and manage the apps that are delivered to devices; an App Ad Network that opens a marketplace of app developers bidding for app install ads; and App and Device Analytics that provides real-time analysis of app installs and devices. As of 2014 SweetLabs was the driver for about 1 million app installs per day, and powered app distribution software for device manufactures including Acer, Toshiba, and the world’s largest PC manufacturer, Lenovo. In June 2011, SweetLabs launched the Pokki, a free application framework software to bring a modern Start Menu replacement to Microsoft Windows 8 and app store to access and discover apps on Windows computers. In January 2014, SweetLabs had driven 50 million installs of Pokki software on Windows-powered devices.

Pokki start menu

Pokki Pokki is a free digital distribution platform and Windows Shell extension by SweetLabs, Inc. that alters the start menu to a look and feel like the second generation start menu used before Windows 8. The extension also adds additional functiona ...

Start menu is a start menu replacement for Windows 8 PCs. The Pokki Start menu returns core functionality of the Windows Start Menu, including central point to find and launch programs and apps, access folders and files, search their computer and the web, manage settings, and shut down. The Pokki Start menu also includes a centralized notification center, a smartphone-like home screen to organize apps, sites, files, folders, an app recommendation service, and access to free web and desktop apps like Pixsta (Instagram desktop app). The Pokki App Store, included in the download, is an app store for free, connected, and downloadable Windows desktop apps and games. Pokki is classified as "viruses and spyware" by Sophos AV.

OpenCandy

Sweetlabs also produced OpenCandy, an

Adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...

module classified as

malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...

by many anti-virus vendors. They flag OpenCandy due to its undesirable side-effects.ADW_OPENCANDY:
Trend Micro page, 30 April 2016

References

External links