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.'"

Comments

As long as..

[NervousNerd]

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.

Re:As long as..

[PhracturedBlue]

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.

Re:As long as..

[Zxarr]

Avast Antivirus is pretty good too. It's free, but you need to register yearly.

Am I missing something?

[Raindance]

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.

Missing some info from the summary

[sqlrob]

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?