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Microsoft's Free AV App May Be a Non-Starter

Posted by kdawson on from the to-morro-tomorrow dept.

CWmike writes "Microsoft is preparing to launch a public beta of Morro, the free anti-malware it announced last November, according to reports. Morro will use the same scanning engine as Windows Live OneCare, the software that the free software will replace and Microsoft's first consumer-grade antivirus package. OneCare is to get the boot as of June 30 (along with finance app Microsoft Money). John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner, has questioned whether users would step up to Morro even if it was free. 'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,' he said. 'Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50." Would you buy it?' Not surprisingly, competitors have dismissed Morro's threat to their business. 'We like our chances,' Todd Gebhart, vice president in charge of McAfee's consumer line, said when it was announced OneCare was a goner. 'Consumers have already rejected OneCare,' added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation.'"

9 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Am I missing something? by Raindance · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan out there, but this summary feels a little over the top.

    'We like our chances,' Todd Gebhart, vice president in charge of McAfee's consumer line, said when it was announced OneCare was a goner. 'Consumers have already rejected OneCare,' added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation.'"

    How can you say that with a straight face? The difference between for-pay and free is huge. And rebranding can make a big difference-- look at the recent success of Bing, for instance.

    Personally, I think people are aching for alternatives to the current big players like McAfee. I'm reminded of this recent slashdot story-

    "'Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities after they automatically renewed consumers' subscriptions without their consent.' The two companies were reported to the New York Attorney General after people complained that their credit cards were being charged without their consent. The investigators found that information about the auto-renewals was hidden at the bottom of long web pages or buried in the EULA."

    I think something that's free and easy to use can compete very well against this sort of customer abuse.

    p.s. anyone else find the quotation by John Pescatore completely unintelligible? Either he's very confused with his analogies or was misquoted.

    1. Re:Am I missing something? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Personally, I think people are aching for alternatives to the current big players like McAfee.

      I'm aching for alternatives to bloatware like AVG, actually.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Am I missing something? by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It gets confusing when Norton and McAffe are the evil entrenched duopoly, and Microsoft is the plucky young upstart. Reminds me of the early 80s.

    3. Re:Am I missing something? by Kamokazi · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I agree. It's one thing to call out Microsoft for their many mistakes, but it's comepletely different to be so rabidly anti-MS that you start making yourself appear stupid. I really thought this statement kind of shows what kind of an idiot this guy is:

      'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,'

      Most malware is not something that exploits vulnerabilities inherent in the product, they exploit the easiest vulnerability of all: the user. A lot of what AV programs do is protect stupid users from infecting their own PCs. Really, it doesn't remove any problems in other products...the patches and updates available for free do that. It will look for known malware that exploits those vulnerabilities if left unpatched, however.

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    4. Re:Am I missing something? by VertigoAce · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Morro (and OneCare) are for unmanaged computers (home users, perhaps small companies). Forefront Client Security is the anti-malware software intended for business use. Both will use the same anti-malware engine, but FCS has all of the manageability and reporting that you would expect in an enterprise.

      I don't really see Morro as an attempt to compete in the home anti-virus market (in other words, Morro is not intended to take sales away from any of the other vendors). The real goal is to try to have anti-virus on all PCs worldwide. There are a number of large markets outside the US where few PCs have anti-virus software. And it wouldn't surprise me if the US market has a fair number of PCs where the trial/subscription for whatever the OEM installed has expired.

  2. You gotta love it by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft, the virtual inventor of buggy bananaware and OS monoculture that enables mass distributable malware gets into the A/V market. Sounds like Typhoid Mary selling antibiotics...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. Missing some info from the summary by sqlrob · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm surprised a quote from this article didn't make it in:

    Morro will work by routing all of a users Internet traffic to a Microsoft datacenter, where the Morro application will process the traffic and identify and block malware in real-time, by examining all of the rerouted traffic

    How many people want all of their traffic explicitly going through Microsoft?

  4. Re:As long as.. by PhracturedBlue · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to a-v comparatives:
    http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/corporate-reviews

    Microsoft's AV software is very good. It has low false-positives and generally scored quite well. If the same capability is free, I don't see a reason not to recommend its use. I certainly don't work for a-v comparatives, but they were around before Microsoft was in AV business, and their top rated software changes pretty freqeuntly. I'd call them reasonably unbiased, but judge for yourself.

  5. better analogy by viralMeme · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "I think that analogy is broken. Very few malware use the holes in MS software these days. Most of the viruses spread by user error, email, IM, flaws in Flash/Acrobat etc"

    Defects in application or 'user error' shouldn't lead to the OS being compromised or the consumers having to pay the sellers more money to fix their defective product.