Microsoft Wants to Cut off Air Supply of Anti-virus Business

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-09-24 19:18:39 UTC
Modified: 2010-09-24 19:18:39 UTC

"We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free."

--Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President (not VM_Bware CEO)

Summary: Another risky step from Microsoft helps alienate the people who helped protect Windows from its own failings

"Microsoft [is] sticking the knife deeper into the anti-virus businesses," Oiaohm told us this morning while pointing to this article.

In its "Partner SMB Community" blog, Microsoft has announced that, in early October, the Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) anti-virus suite will become available to small businesses with up to 10 Windows PCs free-of-charge. As MSE has so far been intended for non-commercial use only, the main choice for Microsoft corporate customers has been Forefront Security.

Pogson points to The Register and says that "Microsoft Knee-caps “Partners”":

Small business is a huge market for the anti-malware business. That’s where all kinds of operations cannot afford to hire their own IT and depend on third parties to keep their IT running. If M$ is giving it away for $0 how will Symantec etc. stay alive? M$ was already giving it away for $0 to consumers.

After the Symantec buyout rumour this is interesting. Why should security be sold separately from an insecure product in the first place? ⬆

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2010-09-25 00:48:59

Reactive defenses, like anti-virus, are not security they are a snake oil "profit center". Microsoft has already given away client snake oil, and they have always made "anti-virus" claims for DOS. We can see from the continued Windows security failure than none of the AV has been worth much to users, and AV sometimes does more harm than good. That won't keep Microsoft from trying to take all the mone for themselves. See this 2006 article and this 2008 story for examples of how Microsoft has treated AV makers since deciding to make money this way. They rolled ever more hostile stuff into XP service packs and Vista.

This SME snake oil may be a short time sales spif to get small business on expensive "software assurance" subscription plans and to sell Vista 7. I can imagine the sales guy saying, "Buy a ten pack, it's cheaper and we'll throw in updates and anti-virus for free." Or it might be the beginning of a real move into more "profit center" to make up for lagging OS sales. The answer is to get rid of Windows.

Microsoft Wants to Cut off Air Supply of Anti-virus Business

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