Anti-malware Vendors Stare Down Microsoft Threat

Captain Rose writes "Matt Hines at eWEEK has stepped up to report the other side of the story CNET inked recently on the perceived death knell that Vista will deliver to independent anti-spyware vendors. There's definitely a fight in store (David v. Goliath), though who knows how long we'll have to wait to see it play out now that Vista's delayed yet again. Is this a bit of foreshadowing on how the new Microsoft OS will address the self-replicating, zero-day spyware threats?" From the article: "Most industry watchers concede that it will be hard for Microsoft to easily displace the enterprise security businesses of leading vendors such as Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, which market integrated packages of applications to companies wishing to solve long lists of problems. However, for firms that are focused on only one of those problem areas, analysts said, Vista and the other Microsoft security products could pose a significant threat."

Comments

Jeez...

[Geldon]

First M$ creates an entire industry focused around fixing holes in their OS. Now they are threatening to fix their own holes and that industry is mad at them?

It seems to me this is like horses being mad at cars for making them obsolete.

However, I am yet to be convinced that Vista will not require third party anti-malware support.

It's not Microsoft's fault for once

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Anti-virus companies, ironically, are very much like a parasite that only lives on a specific host. When the host disappears (pre-Vista versions of Windows), the parasite dies. Either they get lucky and they find a new host in the form of Vista with security problems, or they diversify in a hurry.

For once, you can't blame Microsoft for ruining an industry, and I can't say I'll feel sad if McAfee or Symantec dies...

Re:Don't worry!

[XMilkProject]

Don't worry about that! They told the same about anti virus, web browsers and office suite!

Perhaps you should evaluate the logic of your statement?

Microsofts web browser put the competition out of business. (and got themselves in a bit of a legal battle too)

In the 80's and 90's Word Perfect was the defacto standard for an office suite, and Claris Works was popular on the mac. Then microsoft brought out it's office suite, and has all but put the competition out of buisness.

Not sure where you are going with the anti-virus, since Microsoft has never released one. But when they do, I'm pretty confident it'll steal the market share too.

The point i'm trying to make, is that while all of us know that plenty of non-microsoft products are becoming available, and are even better products in many cases, the fact still remains that microsoft obliterated the competition in all of these areas and only the FOSS community is able to gain any traction at all.

You gotta remember that just becuase you and I use FireFox and OpenOffice.org, doesn't change the fact that 99% of computer users are on Internet Explorer and MS Office.