Google To Microsoft — Give Users Choices In Vista

An anonymous reader writes "A Google spokesman has asked Microsoft to 'preserve user choice for search and other applications' with its future products, such as Vista. The spokesman made this comment after meeting with European Union antitrust regulators, though he added that at this point, the company has no plans to make antitrust allegations against Redmond. Notably, McAfee and Symantec have accused Microsoft of not being forthcoming with the code they need to ensure their security wares run smoothly on Vista, and the EU has already expressed concern about Microsoft's potentially anticompetitive plans."

Comments

Potentially anti-competitive practices?

[Anonymous Coward]

From Microsoft?

Madness, I say! utter madness! And FUD!

No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should Microsoft have to maintain broken code just to preserve McAfee and Symantec revenue streams? That's like saying that, say, Ford shouldn't redesign defective brakes on their cars because it would hurt the sales of aftermarket brake parts.

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[Chosen Reject]

I don't think you understand. McAfee and Symantec aren't complaining that Vista is better and more secure. They're complaint is that Microsoft won't give them the API to low level kernel stuff so that they can detect viruses, while at the same time, Microsoft is going to use that same API for their own virus detection. This isn't Ford continuing to make defective brakes so that third-party brake manufacturers can still be in business, this is Ford some how magically making the brake design unknown to anyone else in the world so that only Ford can make brake replacements. Though in a physical world I don't know how they would do that. This is only possible in software.

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[Anonymous Coward]

their there they're - Learn them. Use them. You sound like an eight year old.

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[DJCacophony]

I DECLARE AN ANALOGY WAR!

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[PsychicX]

while at the same time, Microsoft is going to use that same API for their own virus detection

Is there any evidence that this is actually true? The things I know are:

• The new Microsoft guideline thingies say, no using undocumented or non-public APIs.
• The kernel and low level system guys gets pretty angry when software uses undocumented functionality. That stuff is undocumented precisely because it's not intended to be used.
• Windows Defender, like any other program, is easy to analyze. Determining a complete list of APIs that it uses would be easy using existing tools and techniques, and use of undocumented APIs could be trivially uncovered.
• The only way the MS guys could actually lock out anybody except themselves would be to hardcode a hash of the Defender exe inside the kernel or something. This is another thing that would show up under analysis (though more complex than the previous point). And they couldn't really do that, since it'd make patching Defender kind of hellish. And simply checking executable name would be no good, of course.

So, I guess it just strikes me as extremely unlikely that Microsoft is using undocumented APIs that nobody else knows about or has access to. People -- and by "people" I mean major products from major corporations -- have used undocumented APIs frequently in the past just because they happened to find something that sounded handy in the various DLL export tables. Microsoft using APIs but not allowing access to anyone else sounds pretty good, but I've yet to see any actual evidence to support the claim.

So I ask again. Where is this claim validated?

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[EXMSFT]

Microsoft won't be using the native API's either. McAfee and Symantec just want to use the crappy, cobbled together kernel hooking mechanisms they've used in the past, which will no longer be available for any vendor - including Microsoft, to use. McAfee and Symantec need to grow up a little and learn the proper ways to do this without needing to hack the Windows kernel.

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[Mr. Underbridge]

Actually, even IF your market share is 95%. Heck, even if it's somehow 100% you still aren't required by Anti-Trust laws to hand over your core company secrets.

Secrets, no. Means of interoperation, in many cases, yes. ATT was forced to let other companies use their actual networks, so there's some serious precedent. In this case, we have MS using hidden APIs to let their AV products be better - or actually functional - compared to their competitors. That's pretty much textbook anticompetitive behavior.

To extend the analogy, if Coca-Cola somehow managed to totally out-market every other cola maker in the entire world and completely "OWNED" the Cola market, they still wouldn't be required to hand out the secret formula.

But that's not what we're talking about here. Imagine Coke had 100% market share, and now they enter the cup business. And let's say that put a chemical in coke that rots through competitors' cups, so that you can only use Coke's cups. Would that pass Sherman scrutiny? Not likely.

Just because MS is choosing to (Finally) secure thier OS doesn't mean that Symantec et al can't still offer thier products., They will simply have to rewrite them to work within the new Vista framework.

I think you need to look more carefully at what's going on here. It's not that MS is offering an AV product (fine), it's that it will use kernel hooks that are simply not available to other competitors. I think Symantec et al are clever enough to rewrite for Vista, assuming they're not literally locked out. That's what MS is apparantly doing, and that's a problem.

Re:No sympathy for McAfee and Symantec

[ThinkFr33ly]

I think you need to look more carefully at what's going on here. It's not that MS is offering an AV product (fine), it's that it will use kernel hooks that are simply not available to other competitors. I think Symantec et al are clever enough to rewrite for Vista, assuming they're not literally locked out. That's what MS is apparantly doing, and that's a problem.

Actually, that's not what's happening at all. Microsoft OneCare NOT using any kernel hooks. It is using the EXACT same APIs available to all of Microsoft's competitors. Anybody who tells you any different is just spreading FUD.

Several other anti-virus companies have come out in support of Microsoft, and have actually released beta versions of their suites that work just fine on Vista.

The fact of the matter is that Symantec and McAfee don't want to invest the time and money into re-writing their existing applications that rely on all these kernel hooks, which, by the way, were NEVER supported to begin with. They see a great opportunity to do some good old fashion MS-bashing and FUD spreading in an attempt to get Microsoft to give up on one of the most important security improvements in Windows... um... ever.

I'd care more if...

[rainman_bc]

If McAfee and Norton didn't make products that suck resources real bad. If ever there was a product that could be called bloatware, those two are it. Give me Trend AV any day thanks.

Then again I'm on my Linux laptop running no AV software.

Re:I'd care more if...

[orielbean]

Here is a question for the knowledgeable - which of the AV products (free and otherwise) are the BEST for resources and still competent at catching problems?

Is Trend the smallest footprint? I would love some answers from the people here.

Re:I'd care more if...

[Shadow99_1]

*cough* Anti-MS Zealot *cough*

Other AV's work just fine without these tools Symantec and McAfee demand. This is not an issue of MS crowding out a critical component from potential competitors to take market share. This is MS making an attempt to do what they promised (ie secure windows more than they have in the past). Whether I agree with the method MS is taking or not, this has more to do with Symantec and McAfee being whiny brats that refuse to give up 'control' of 'security' to the ones who should have been doign that job in the first place. The compnent they want access to is the layer that provides basic system protection and notification to the user about the systems staus, so they can use their own interface on it with whatever they decide is important to be their. I don't trust either side to really get it right, but at least in this I don't see any point what so ever to allow the other companies access where they really don't need to be. This will not make people more secure, this is about McAfee and Symantec having to face reality that certain parts of the system don't function like they used to and whining all over the place that they changed things is stupid.

Microsoft to Google

[phorest]

[start reply] Get a life.

sure

[illuminatedwax]

Sure, they'll do it just as soon as Firefox stops choosing Google by default.

Re:sure

[manno]

They can make MS the default search system, Google is just asking MS to allow the user to select other search engines.

Re:sure

[ksalter]

When you first upgrade to IE 7, the first page that appears is a configuration page. The first item is selecting your search engine. You can either take the current one (which defaults to the Microsoft Live Search) or choose a different one. If you select the second option, you are taken to a page with almost every search engine on it to choose from, or you can put your own selection in if it is not listed. So, you can. Google's complaint is without merit.

This is getting ridiculous...

[X-treme-LLama]

Is there anyone else who thinks it's a little unfair for Microsoft to criticized for cutting out Symantec, etc. They've been railed for years on their complete lack of security focus, probably nowhere more than here. They're finally attempting to fill that need (admittedly in microsoft fashion), and now it's unfair to AV software makers? C'mon Symantec and others built their business around securing an insecure OS, it's not the OS's fault for finally working to secure itself. Sure MS could open up more of their code to allow AV software to get around their own security and AV solutions, but why should they.

I guess I don't understand why it's MS's job to make it easier for other software makers. If they want to market their software they should employ some programmers who are smart enough to code around MS. As long as MS isn't actively disabling competitors software I don't see why this is their fault..

We wanted them to be more secure in the first place!!!

And just so no one thinks I'm a fanboy, I'm typing this from a Mac :) -- I'm just against BS in general and against bitching at Microsoft just because it's Microsoft..

Re:This is getting ridiculous...

[orasio]

Te issue is that they are a monopoly right now.
Monopolists don't have the same rights than other people.
So they can't do what others can.
One thing is this: using their OS monopoly to impose their AV solution.
That is anti-competitive. You might say that it's not fair, but when you are talking about monopolies, the meaning of fairness changes, because they don't compete under the same conditions.

You can already do this in IE7

[brunes69]

I don't really know what Google is ranting about. Google is 2 clicks away as the default search engine in IE7.

I perfectly understand why Microsoft doesn't want to show a stupid "Pick your default search engine" dialog box at startup - that would be stupid.

Really, this is one issue I don't agree with Google on.

Now, if there comes to light something in Vista that, for example, prevents Google Desktop from being installed, then I would be very upset.

IE7 preserves search settings; what about Safari?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I don't know what happens when upgrading to Vista, but upgrading to IE7 does preserve the search settings. When I upgraded to IE7, Yahoo was set as the default search engine (because I had installed Yahoo toolbar in the past), not Live.

Secondly, Google has some nerve demanding that Microsoft give users a choice regarding search engines when they have a deal with Apple that makes Google not only the default, but the exclusive search engine for Safari, which is Mac OSX's default browser, and one that holds a monopoly-like share wrt browser usage in Mac OS X. Not only can the user not change the default search engine in Safari, but the user can't even add any secondary search engines.