Microsoft announced that they're going to stop selling their consumer security product OneCare, and instead they're going to give away for free an anti-virus (AV) product based on the same technology.
With traditional anti-virus protection perhaps becoming obsolete, maybe it's time that Symantec and McAfee start offering free versions of their own anti-virus products.
A more complete solution is needed to provide complete client side protection. AV, malware and Trojan protection as well as a firewall that is superior to the basic firewall in Windows Vista is what a user really needs.
Windows 7 will have a more robust bi-directional firewall that keeps unwanted incoming traffic from invading your network and also prevent Trojans and zombies from setting up a small server on the your PC that transmits you password and credit card information to criminals.
AVG, Avast and Avira already provide free AV software, but they just provide basic protection.
You need the version you pay for to provide comprehensive protection. As an alternative, you download a free program called Spybot to provide spyware and malware protection and a free firewall called Comodo that is an improvement over the basic XP Pro and Vista unidirectional firewalls. Of course, you now have three different programs you have to mange and update.
Anti-virus vendors certainly were worried when Microsoft entered the AV market. They assumed they would follow the old business practice in which they would drive competition out. That is what they may be now doing with a free AV package that will bundled with Windows 7 or provided with a free download.
The big vendors knew Microsoft could trounce their small office/home office (SOHO) business, but they would not be in a good position to meet enterprise needs because Microsoft does not have a global server AV solution that can handle a large enterprise network and push agents and updates out to desktops automatically.
Symantec began moving into new markets to diversify and improve its enterprise business. While McAfee already had a strong enterprise offering, it protected its consumer market share by striking big OEM pre-install deals with major PC manufacturers like Dell in the hopes of retaining market share. McAfee had invented anti-virus software so it had been in this business for a long time.
Microsoft's entry into the AV market flopped. It's not for lack of trying on Microsoft's part. In January 2007, they were struggling to claim just one per cent of the market. There is no evidence that Microsoft has made any strides since then. Its AV business has been a resounding failure.
In short, Microsoft spent the money, and in relatively short order had a product that was just as good as any of their competitors but not really any better. They built a large team. They spent a lot on marketing. But the people never came.
What went wrong? First, the world has long held the perception that Microsoft is bad at security because they are constantly patching their operating systems (OS) and network operating systems (NOS).
When Microsoft was going through anti-trust hearings during the Clinton Administration era, the standard joke was the company would be split into two companies: Microsoft who would give the OS away for free and the second company, Patchsoft, would charge for the innumerable patches that Microsoft produced during the life cycle of an OS.
Microsoft may want to give away a free version is for community goodwill and to prove they are good at security. Rightardia is skeptical about the goodwill motive. In the past Microsoft would reverse engineer the intellectual property of competitors and bundle it with the OS for free to destroy competition. Netscape built on of the first commercial browsers and was selling it to enterprise customers until Microsoft fielded Internet Explorer (IE) and gave it away for free.
This destroyed Netscape, but it had its revenge when it created the open source product called Firefox, which most IT people consider to be a better, more versatile and secure browser than IE.
Even when Microsoft came in at low price points, people still thought that security was important enough that they should go with a more trusted name. For those people that were really concerned by price, they started moving to other cheap options, but ones offered by dedicated security companies like AVG, Avira and Avast. Many Savvy IT people buy AV products on Ebay.
Keep in mind that Microsoft has also lost 15 per cent of its desktop market share to Linux and Apple. There are a variety of free and low cost AV products for Linux. ClamAv is one that that can be used on desktops and servers. It can scan the file system as well as incoming and outgoing email and has many other features. Why buy the new Windows 7 when one can get OpenOffice, a broad selection of firewalls, AV products, an excellent Firefox browser and the Evolution email client for free in Linux?
In addition, after upgrading to Windows 7 in the SOHO environment, all of the XP Pro applications such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, a CD/DVD burner such as Nero Burning ROM and other other software that I bought when I installed XP Pro on a PC would have to be upgraded.
If a PC had not been updated to Microsoft Vista, one would have to backup all of the user data and reformat the hard drive to install Windows 7. There is no upgrade path from XP Pro to Windows 7.
Try Ubuntu Linux 9.04 or Fedora 10 before you invest some big bucks in the Windows 7 OS and all the new applications you are going to have to upgrade. This article was written using the OpenOffice 3.0 Word Processor with the Ubuntu 9.04 OS.
Windows is for kids with big wallets who like to play games. Linux rocks!
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