Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Free AV App May Be a Non-Starter
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.'"
As long as it doesn't suck as much as Norton (slow, hard to remove), I'll take a look at it. Right now I'm running ClamWin, and I'm looking for a better (free) anti-virus.
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.
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
'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?'
This analogy is just dumb. This is a free product. Obviously the analogy would have the water company saying, "Sure, we can remove that for free."
Not to mention 'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,' which is a stupid point to make about a free product.
Furthermore, MS's security "problems" are over a billion installs. As we see every year when they tie Linux as the most secure system in pwn2own, they've got nothing to be upset about on the technical side of things.
And finally, "added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation'" is pretty funny from a guy representing a company that actually charges for substandard security technology.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I'm surprised a quote from this article didn't make it in:
How many people want all of their traffic explicitly going through Microsoft?
I have to use a bad car analogy. If I buy a BMW and it breaks down, I take it to the BMW dealer to work on it. Some people obviously opt for third party repair, but a lot trust the manufacturer, even though it is often design problems that caused the breakdown. I understand that people have unreasonable expectations that their purchases don't have vulnerabilities and will last forever, but the other 95% of the population recognizes that complicated systems need repairs and protection.
I don't know if this will be successful, but to think that it should not be trusted or immediately dismissed is ignorant. That being said, I don't use Microsoft products, largely because I don't like AV. Linux FTW!
'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."
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. MS is offering a service to clean them up and does provide free fixes for bugs in their software. Obligatory car analogy, car company sells insurance for breakins and accidents and charges extra. Why not pay for it if the deal is good?
This space for rent.
"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.
Name a OS where user error can't lead to the OS being compromised. Maybe only in a very locked down system like a kiosk , but a kiosk is not every useful and the user won't have any freedom. If you can install Firefox, you can install a virus. Unless there's a whitelist, but would you trust a whitelist maintained by MS? An alternative is total application virtualization, but given the fact that applications need to talk to each other and be able to access user files make it tough.
This space for rent.
Microsoft has, for years, maintained three separate tools in this space (that I know of, there might be others). They change the names of them periodically, to confuse their hapless victims.
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
You gotta read this page. They release a new version every month. It apparently cannot remove viruses which are not actively running. Why is this tool not built in to Microsoft Windows Defender?
Windows Live One Care
This link shows a forum moderator, chastising a poor infested user for asking a question about a different Microsoft antivirus product -- Microsoft Windows Defender. Why are these separate products, again?
Microsoft Windows Defender
Formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware.
These should be one product. The fact that Microsoft maintains three separate products to deal with this problem is, itself, an indication of a very serious ongoing problem at Microsoft. As a company, they still don't take this seriously.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.