Microsoft to move from fee based OneCare antivirus to free Morro
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Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it was releasing a new streamlined antivirus product with a small foot print, code-named “Morro”. Additionally, Microsoft says that the product will be completely free.
In June of 2003, Microsoft announced plans to purchase GeCad Software, a Romanian based antivirus firm. Microsoft did this as part of it’s “Trustworthy Computing” initiative, a plan to fix the nearly two-thirds of Windows users who don’t have current antivirus software installed. If Microsoft could get this product out to its operating system users for a fee, it would stand a good chance of not only making a profit, but also securing millions of connected PCs.
Most computers users are home users that will faithfully use the McAfee or Norton antivirus products that came installed on their new PC, or at least until the free trial of the software ends. Most antivirus software being run by home computer users is not the latest version and is not receiving any updates for new viruses due to a lapsed subscription.
In November of 2003, Microsoft partnered with Computer Associates to offer a free year of eTrust EZ Armor antivirus software as part of its “Protect Your PC” campaign for Microsoft’s Windows operating system users. This move was apparently to fill the gap that Microsoft would need to roll out its own antivirus technology garnered from the GeCad deal. The partnership briefly sent share prices down for CA’s competitors, and got the CA name out to regular computer users regarding security products. Unfortunately, most Windows users never took advantage of this free download, and the “Protect Your PC” campaign was only mildy successful.
In May of 2006, after a long beta program, Microsoft started offering Windows Live OneCare, the company’s fee based antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall solution which satisfied the needs of Windows security center alerts. Unfortunately, even though the product was offered by Microsoft itself, their antivirus software was still installed far less often than other trial version products installed by computer manufacturers and retailers.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008, Microsoft announced “To address the growing need for a PC security solution tailored to the demands of emerging markets, smaller PC form factors and rapid increases in the incidence of malware, Microsoft Corp. plans to offer a new consumer security offering focused on core anti-malware protection.” The product will be released in the second half of 2009 and will be code-named “Morro”. The software promises to have a small footprint and not require high bandwidth Internet connectivity to maintain.
Based on the information in the press release, Morro will use the same engine as it’s OneCare product, borrowing from technology purchased from GeCad Software. Although this technology has not performed as well as other free antivirus products currently on the market, I’m hoping that Microsoft will finally push this product as part of the core Windows operating system. Unfortunately, most users just aren’t aware of free antivirus products for their PCs. If Microsoft can get the word out through it’s update system, we could see a decrease in the number of malware infected Internet hosts, and protect millions of computer users from privacy and security problems that often lead to credit card fraud, theft of funds, and identity theft.
Free antivirus products are currently available for home users from Avira, AVG, Avast, and many more vendors. I personally recommend Avira, due to it’s high catch rate for malware threats.