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Microsoft to Buy Anti-Virus Software Firm
thejuggler writes "Excite News is reporting that Microsoft is planning to buy Sybari Software Inc., which makes programs designed to protect business computer networks from viruses, worms and other threats. This is Microsoft's second purchase of an anti-virus company. The article states that Microsoft is thinking about charging for their anti-virus and anti-spyware software."
why? they're seeing this HUGE market that makes money on the flaws of their products.
it's sadly logical that they'd get more money if they got a cut of that market instead of eliminating it.....
though.. msav.. nothing new.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The article states that Microsoft is thinking about charging for their anti-virus and anti-spyware software.
I don't see how they couldn't, without risking further anti-trust-related accusations.
The coolest voice ever.
This is vertical integration. They are purchasing software to make their product more complete.
Antitrust would be involved if they purchased Apple, Sun, IBM or Red Hat, as they have Operating Systems.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
"Bucharest, June 10, 2003 – GeCAD Software has announced a definitive agreement with Microsoft Corp., of Redmond, Wash., USA, by which Microsoft will acquire GeCAD’s antivirus technology. Microsoft has stated its intention to integrate GeCAD’s technology into products and services that will help secure customers."
http://www.ravantivirus.com/
RAV produced RAV AntiVirus Desktop for Linux [8.1.4]
By all accounts it was a really good product. MS scuppered my plans to try it out >:(
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Microsoft bought RAV some time ago- who made a fine Windows and Linux AV program. They also made RAV for most all of the UNIX mail programs such as qmail, courier, sendmail, postfix, etc.
Was sad to see it go... apparently it was also to include its technology, but if you ask me, it was more to get it out of the antivirus mail server market.
This is nothing new-- Microsoft buys anyone who has something to offer them or their competititors... yippie
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Well, the interesting thing here is that some people on the Free Software Business mailing list claim that the economic model for open source has a flaw. You get paid for selling support, right? But that means fixing bugs that you, yourself wrote. There's a clear conflict of interest there, right? You make mistakes and then you profit from them. And yet here's Microsoft doing the same thing. So while I agree that it's a flaw, it doesn't seem to be limited to open source software!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Tell that to Standard Oil.
Clones are people two.
That's a rather bad analogy unless you're implying that Microsoft are somehow responsible for writing and distributing viruses.
I think the analogy is sound if you merely believe Microsoft is negligent in the propagation of viruses. That is, did they do everything reasonable to both protect their sofware from infection and prevent it from being a vector? Anyone who sells infrastructure is responsible for taking *reasonable* precautions against abuse of that infrastucture.
Asking any software to be totally secure is unreasonable, but how many years was it from the time Microsoft added macros to documents until the time they added any mechanism to avoid propagation of macro viruses? I remember using ad-hoc third party software for several years.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
According to some very informative posts on the Yahoo SCOX stock board, Symantec has the rights to a very key patent in this area and McAfee has a perpetual, fully paid-up license to the said patent. Neither company would relish MSFT moving in on their nice little market and may well have solid legal grounding for setting $FELINE amongst $AVIANS.
> It's like complaining about Antitrust because Microsoft bought Bungie.
No, it's more like complaining about Antitrust if Microsoft could/did purchase Gimp and only produced a Windows version.
Since Microsoft was found guilty of illegal use of its monopoly in operating systems against other operating systems, it should NOT be allowed to remove products from the market when they provide products for OTHER operating systems. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Or like when Apple bought Emagic and killed off the Windows version of the very popular sequencer Logic Audio.
Kind of like the Bungee purchase. Take the strongest supporters of your competition and make them Windows only. Fortunately they make too much money off VPC to kill it.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
RAV actually had the widest platform support for non-Microsoft platforms. :) Sybari's platform support seems to be quite wide as-well, incl. Solaris, OS/2, AIX and Windows/Alpha. :)
Knoppix can do this. A relatively new feature for Knoppix is a program (under Knoppix->Utilities?) that installs programs to the RAM disk--allowing for non-distributable programs (those with restrictive licences) to be automatically downloaded and installed. F-Prot is one of the programs available for the installer to download and install.
Granted, my claim was made without any links unfortunately. However with a little googling, what I stated will become more obvious. ClamAV donors have paid subscriptions fees for ClamAV to be on certain select lists that anti-virus companies are on. I've never used these lists or interacted with them, but it is my understanding that they are kind of like mailing lists for virus companies to keep each other up to date on whats out there. According to ClamAV's site they more or less release updates daily. Perhaps they are small enough that they can bare the load. Major AV companies tend to toss out updates weekly unless something major is spreading. So it makes sense that ClamAV would beat them to it. Also, I know I've submitted at least 3 previously unknown viruses to Symantec and ClamAV and clamav did indeed update quicker( Symantec is what we use at my corporation, maybe one day I can convince the upper management to try out ClamAV, even if its just as a second defense) and I was also involved in a federal investigation regarding blaster. (I wasn't involved in creating it, but my network was one of the first 50 hit and so we had some valuable data and were known to be close to the source of the attack). I am by no means a virus expert and where as I personally like ClamAV for my own mail gateways, at my company we use Symantec, which is also very nice. I'm not saying one is better then the other, but am simply stating that ClamAV from my experience and also from the source that I unfortunately can't find, sometimes (not always)updates quicker
Regards,
Steve
Sell a crappy OS, then sell people the ability to protect themselves from it. Could this be a new form of double-dipping?