As a techie who thinks he gets all the protection he needs from his Avast install, a lot of us might scoff at this news, but I assure you it’s a big deal. Microsoft is set to start up a beta for their own free antivirus program, which will be available to Windows users as an alternative to the likes of McAfee and, ugh, Norton. This is not to be confused with Microsoft’s Live OneCare, which costs $50 and in my experience is pretty junky. This would be a program a la Windows Defender, which for most users would just sit in the background and do its thing. One Joris Evers of McAfee, very tellingly, said that “On a level playing field, we are confident in our ability to compete with anyone who might enter the marketplace.” And that’s just the thing: Microsoft has an almost unfair advantage.
Most users who pay for their antivirus do so because they do not have an alternative, or at least they think they don’t. This is why so many McAfee subscriptions are sold with new machines from Dell, despite the fact that one can just download Avast and avoid paying a dime. Microsoft’s own antivirus means that the casual computer user doesn’t even have to seek out security software anymore; it comes with everything else. So why go out and buy something that you can get for free?
Of course, a contingent of users (the majority of people who read this site, for example) will not make the switch to whatever Microsoft eventually calls their software until it is shown that it is at least as effective as the alternatives. Still, people like that are only a small part of Microsoft’s demographic.
