What Will Antivirus Vendors Do When Microsoft Offers Their Antivirus for Free?

The problem of antivirus protection has been a difficult one for me for quite a while now. I will have to admit that I’m not the right kind of geek and sometimes I can be careless enough to ignore problems until they become too obvious. This describes my attitude to security precisely.

Over the years I would choose a product, use it happily (or not) and then something happens that prevents this product from working (like I forget to renew my license) and then I forget about all the viruses and threats for a while - simply because they don’t seem to exist to me until they damage my computer performance. And of course it always results in one thing: my computer gets infected and I rush to buy a new antivirus solution to neutralize the problem.

After every such accident I become super-cautious for a couple of months maybe but then it usually repeats. I guess for a person who once had the entire hard drive formatted by a virus (that was long ago, almost 10 years now) this is more than careless but all my attempts to be a good girl who values her security failed - for one reason or another.

A few months ago I decided to finally settle on one antivirus. So I made my research and decided to choose Kaspersky - mostly because I try to support Russian developers whenever I can. I downloaded the trial version, installed it, lived with it for a week or so but then realized it totally paralyzed work of one application that is pretty important to me (I use it in localization when I have customers who want to localize their applications for Russia). The conflict seemed to be deep enough and was only resolved by uninstalling both the application and the antivirus - obviously to only install the application again.

Then I decided to try Dr. Web - another Russian solution that does not have a perfect reputation but I told you I was a patriot, right? That was a very bad idea: the trial version that I downloaded left me quite unhappy with the overall performance so I decided not to buy a license but it somehow does not want to be uninstalled and nothing I tried worked for me - even after reading their support forums and doing a number of tricks recommended there it still sits in the background and keeps reminding me that I have not purchased a license key every time I reboot my computer. So for now I try to persuade myself there will be nothing particularly wrong in letting it stay there until I uninstall the operating system (which will probably only come with a new notebook).

Now imagine my excitement over the recent announcement of Panda cloud antivirus - which has two great factors that made me try it immediately: it is free and it works automatically almost without user involvement.

Of course this idea of free antivirus that somehow works somewhere in the cloud yet protects your computer without you realizing it (and submitting information on new threats to Panda in exchange for free service) may sound scary to many but I already rely on way too many web-based applications to be afraid of them (and with my careless approach to protection I think that any protection is better than no protection at all). Besides, I totally adore it when antivirus software protects my computer automatically without involving me in the process other than to initiate an occasional scanning when I feel like doing so.

So I’ve been Panda user since the day of its release and I think that I can admit it now: I am absolutely happy with their approach and their product. It works flawlessly, it finds viruses and threats and neutralizes them, and it does not bother me at all. On top of that, it’s free.

Now I know that Panda is in beta and chances are there are some problems I am not aware of and these problems could even hurt me somehow in the future. But at least for now I am happy and I hope that this solution will demonstrate exactly how an antivirus should work like to other companies. And if at some point they want to charge for subscription, I would not mind that at all because I am always happy to pay for a product I like - cloud or not.

So it is no wonder that I have been thinking for a while about how life-changing this approach may be for the entire computer security industry and how other software vendors will deal with a competition like this - at least when it comes to competition for residential users (corporate users may not be that willing to move to a cloud antivirus).

And now it looks like there’s another company that is willing to change the rules in the market - and this company has all the resources needed to change the market forever. The company is Microsoft itself and the software giant promises it will be launching a free hosted antivirus application (code-named Morro) of its own soon.

Quite logically, this is something Microsoft should have done years ago simply because insecurity of its operating systems has been famous and many of us had our reasons to be unhappy about it. But my question for now is how this idea will change the antivirus software market and how difficult it will be for software vendors to sell their solutions to end users when all the Windows users will already have a free tool readily available.

In fact, it is obvious that Microsoft is actually the only company that numerous software developers that have built their multi-million companies on computer and internet security should thank for the mere fact of their existence. After all, if Microsoft’s operating systems could protect us from viruses and other threats efficiently, who would want to buy dedicated software titles that simply duplicate the features of the operating system itself?

Now that I am a Panda user and I see Microsoft also promising a similar solution of its own that will also deliver real-time protection, I can definitely say I am happy to see this process. At least this sounds like exactly what a lazy home computer user needs to feel secure - something that you can install and configure once and forget about.

Of course software vendors will still keep their corporate customers because Morro is obviously aimed at residential users and will not solve the problems related to corporate networks protection. And corporate networks actually generate those huge revenues for software vendors. But again, it feels good to know someone is willing to protect you somewhere in the cloud - at least if you believe Microsoft is the company you can trust with your protection.