If you’ve ever owned a Windows PC, there’s a very good chance you’ve heard the soothing sound of digital clutter being deleted by CCleaner . For nearly two decades, that little green broom has been a staple of the tech world.

And that’s a clean legacy to leave behind. Do you still use CCleaner, or have you switched to built-in OS tools? Let me know in the comments below.

However, and available for download. The free versions remain functional, though you’ll have to navigate around upgrade prompts.

But behind that icon is a fascinating story of a small British software company: . From London to the World Founded in 2004 by Piriform Ltd. in London, England, the company didn’t set out to build an empire. They simply wanted to solve a common frustration: slow, bloated PCs.

Their flagship product, (later rebranded to the more family-friendly CCleaner ), was a lightweight utility that did one thing remarkably well. It removed temporary files, browser history, and unused registry entries that bogged down older machines.