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

[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.

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.

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.