Will Microsoft Control the Anti-Spyware Market?

jasondubya asks: "With all the recent publicity of Microsoft's new Anti-Spyware product, I wonder if there will be any room in the market for other companies? After recent comparisons between with current market leaders showed large failings in their products, do they stand a chance against the behemoth that is Microsoft?"

Comments

Frankly...

[jd]

No. Not a hope. When Microsoft's Anti-Virus product is free (and, undoubtably, be bundled at some point) why would anybody buy or use another product?

This'll be no different from the Browser Wars. In that case, Microsoft bought Spyglass and used its browser, offering it as a free download. In this case, they bought someone else and used their AV products, offering it as a free download.

So far, there's not much evidence of any change in strategy. Enough so that several AV vendors are getting definitely twitchy. I'm not surprised. If they survive as long as Netscape did, it would be impressive.

Oh, and don't expect the regulators to step in, any time soon. It was hard enough getting them to do anything when the Democrats were in office. There is absolutely sod all reason for them to do anything now.

Finally, look at it from Microsoft's standpoint. They lost a court case in Europe, which harmed their share value and took a small nibble out of their pockets. With security being the current "watch-word", here is their big chance to take back some of that lost value. It'll also hamper European efforts to regulate them, as they can chown() technologies faster than the EU can ban them from doing so.

It's not about spyware, stupid.

[drakaan]

This is an example of a shrewd move on Microsoft's part, and it has very little to do with wanting to control the AV market.

One nugget of info can be gleaned by going through the process of installing their Spyware removal software. They mention that you have a chance to verify your Microsoft Software is genuine, and they *also* mention that in the future doing so may be *required*.

Think about that for a second. How many illegal copies of Windows are out there? How much money does Microsoft *not* make on those copies of Windows? They discovered a must-have software product (that I expect they won't charge for, other than the price of a copy of Windows if you're running unlicensed) that they can use to solve most of their piracy woes. It's clever, but I suppose it's fair.

The diabolical part is that once you install their Spyware removal tool, they have a perfect way to scare the clueless into removing software that they (Microsoft) don't especially like. When I ran it the first time, it identified winPcap and WinVNC (the *client*, for crying out loud!) as spyware and gave me scary warnings about wanting to remove them. It's only a matter of time before OpenOffice makes the list, and a lot of people will either accept the defaults and delete whatever Microsoft Tells them to, or will be unsure about how safe it is to run a given piece of software and reluctantly delete it.

There are a few companies I trust to give me a decent list of spyware apps to detect, and Microsoft isn't one of them. They don't want to control the AV market or the Spyware market, they want to decide for you about *any* programs you install on your PC.