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Companies such as F-Secure, Panda Software and Sophos are taking a low-key approach, unlike their U.S. counterparts. Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec, in particular, has been vocal in its opposition to Microsoft, even sending executives to Europe to talk to reporters about how it fears the software giant will undercut security rivals with Windows Vista.
That doesn't mean, however, that the Europeans don't share the concerns that have been voiced by Symantec, McAfee and others.
"We should regard Microsoft's entry into this space as a threat," said Josu Franco, director of corporate development at Panda Software in Bilbao, Spain. "Microsoft is trying to leverage its monopoly in the desktop to compete in the antivirus space, and we should call that abuse."
Europe is a key battleground for Microsoft as it gets ready to ship Vista, the successor to Windows XP that is slated to be broadly available in January. The European Commission has already warned Microsoft to stick to its competition rules--in particular, those that prohibit abuse of a dominant market position. Microsoft continues to seek out what's permissible in Vista.
Europe has many small companies that sell antivirus and other security products. Some are concerned that they face the same fate as Netscape, the venerable browser company that saw its business evaporate after Microsoft added Internet Explorer to Windows.
"All of them are concerned, and should be," said Thomas Raschke, a Hellerup, Denmark-based analyst at Forrester Research. "The security market, and particularly the most mature areas like antivirus and firewalls, is maturing and consolidating rapidly. Many of the companies will either have to join forces or disappear."
The Netscape effect
While security software and Web browsers are obviously different, Microsoft's intentions are the same and hold an equal risk for security, Franco said.
"I don't think that anybody would say that having Internet Explorer on over 90 percent of desktops has been good for consumers in terms of innovation, user choice and especially in security. We all know that this monoculture in browsers has been bad," Franco said.
But Microsoft maintains that it can't protect Windows on its own and that other security companies are important.
"We don't believe that Microsoft can solve this problem by itself, and we need the industry's support in this effort," said Adrien Robinson, a business development manager at Microsoft. "The more that we can do with partners, the better for our customers."
Security software and features have emerged as the hottest topic among a number of concerns with Vista, which will come with added security technology. At the same time, Microsoft is pushing into the security space with a new product for consumers, Windows Live OneCare, and is working on protective business products under the Forefront brand.
"As long as Microsoft allows equal access to the operating system, we can differentiate," said Steve Munford, CEO of Sophos, a security company in Abingdon, England. "We have to make sure that we have a broader and more comprehensive strategy than Microsoft."
Symantec, which leads the worldwide antivirus software market, has been loudest in raising the alarm over Vista and Microsoft's entry into the security arena. CEO John Thompson earlier this year warned of a future where all security applications are provided by Microsoft.
"The concerns from the U.S. companies are real," said Risto Siilasmaa, chief executive officer at F-Secure, based in Helsinki, Finland.
Pricing concerns
Predatory pricing is of particular concern, said Siilasmaa. "If Microsoft starts to offer their solutions at significantly reduced price levels to gain market share, and then plans to raise prices again after a few years, that obviously is a business issue all the companies have to tackle," he said.
Microsoft could change the game on pricing, Munford agreed. "You always think about predatory pricing, but I have not seen any evidence of it," he said. Siilasmaa also said he hasn't yet seen any signs that the software giant will sell its products at artificially low prices in order to harm rivals.
In the short term, Microsoft's entry into the security industry might mean lower prices, but that isn't necessarily good for software buyers, Franco said. "We would think that Microsoft tactics to compete in this space will ultimately hurt consumers," he said.
The software giant has introduced its Windows Live OneCare in the U.S., but the consumer security product is not yet available in Europe.
See more CNET content tagged:
business development, Panda Software, Netscape Communications Corp., Europe, Sophos Plc.
democracy in Europe. It is because the European governments 1st work for the benefit of their citizens and then Big corporations/media, whereas in US the government 1st works for the benefit of Big (wall street backed) corporation and at the distant 2nd place for it's citizens.
To see this point, consider the fact the people in USA still don't even have Universal Health care!
No European government would last 6 months in power if it was omitting to provide its citizen
with such a basic service. You have to go to real pathetically poor countries, such as Angola, Gahana, Bangeladesh, etc. to find other examples of countries that do not provide universal health care to their citizens. To put things into perspective of how un-democratic this is: more Americans die (every few days) from lack of health care than died in Sep/11/2001!
Now I can give you another 1000 examples of how un-democratic the US is compared to European
countries, but the example of lack of Universal Health care is all the room I have here.
The question is then, how is it possible that the US is so un-democratic? How do the powers to be in US get away with this lack of democracy?
How come there are not demonstrations in US streets to replace their un-democratic government
with a democratic one, as there are all the time in European countries? The answer is that the US media is controlled by a handful of people, who have "brain washed" the people into gullibility and not knowing what is the truth anymore.
And the US media is not just WallStreet Journal, CNN, CBS, etc.but it is also Hollywood,
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc., it is this oligopoly that wants to control all "eye balls" worldwide.
So EU indeed needs to take the actions that it has taken against Microsoft and in fact
take further actions to protect it's economy/culture from being controlled by US media oligopoly. Less EU wants to end up being as un-democratic and as fundamentally poor as US and it's citizens are. Again keep in mind that the US is so pathetically poor & undemocratic that it's citizens do not get Universal Health care, in fact more than 45 Million have NO health care at all, and more die of lack of health care (every few days) than were killed during 9/11 but when you turn on US media, from CNN to Yahoo to Google (News) all you read about is "Killing", "Terrorist", "9/11" and etc. having
to do with War & Killing, which is a clear attempt at brain washing. Now, does Europe or for that matter rest of the free world wants to have its information "eye balls"
limited to this country which is and will be the case if we allow the US media monopoly to continue
and lets not be mistaken that a key part of this monopoly is Microsoft, Yahoo & Google.
Did the citizens of EU protest against Microsoft for including WMP and other software in their OS? Were there any protest march on streets of EU?? NO... because people don't care and it hardly makes any difference to people.
So yes, it's the corporates for which EU is fighting Microsoft for, not the citizens. Citizens won't benefit from this decision unless EU distributes the fine collected from MS among them. The worst part is that some of the corporates EU is fighting for are actually US based.
I know in the U.S. you can't vote out the regulator directly - you have vote for the Presdient, hope his/her party wins; hope he/she changes the guard; hope he/she can, by changing the guard, change the career bureaucrats. That's how administrtative democracy works stateside.
I didn't know the process was different in the EU - more direct. How cool. I gather Europeans can vote those that they like out. If that's so, then maybe it is better. Are you running, then?
I think you're focusiong on the ends that you like. Wait until the next Big Brother bureaucrat moves in and does something you really dislike - like mandate only proprietary software in government procurements. Then you'll be crying a different story.
Furthermore, a free health care system is not a requirement for a country to be democratic. Americans realize that they would have to pay absurd tax hikes to pay for a "free" healthy care system. If a majority of Americans really wanted a free health care system, they would elect an official who agreed with them. They could also put it on this thing called a "referendum" where the people can directly vote for policy issues. Crazy huh?
That is so absurd it's hard to believe anyone outside the anti-virus business is really buying this crap! This isn't Microsoft tagging WMP into all of their software to kill a business unrelated to the O/S. (Even that is questionable, but point at issue is far more broad than this case.) Microsoft should legally be able to do whatever they want to secure -their- operating system! These damn AV people are such a joke. They only have their jobs because Microsoft wasn't able to secure their software in the past. Now, Microsoft is working on making their software secure and all the anti-virus people are mad. Why don't they go complain about Apple not working more errors into their O/S code?
What next? Are graphics designers going to go run crying to the EC because Microsoft might make a cool background picture?
Our government represents what a democracy looks like when you have an apathetic and an ignorant public who doesn't take a proactive role in actively its electoral and voting processes. The Bush administration is the culmination of our electoral/voting decadence. This adminstration shows just how apathetic the American citizens have become and what levels of deceit, conflicts of interest and incompetence it will tolerate from its leadership - rather than have to take action to correct the system that put them there. How can we argue that we don't have what we deserve?
But the fact is that they have Universal health care in all European countries, whereas at least 45Mill Americans have NO health care and as many of them our dying every 2 to 3 days from this lack of health care than were killed from
9/11! Now our government goes and spends $700Bill and counting to fight the so called "War on Terror" because 9/11 killed about 3000 Americans whereas again that many Americans die every 2 to 3 days from having NO health care.
And using the example of your mother in law, had she been in USA not would she have gotten ill & died but she would have also racked up $100,000 in bills too which would have wiped her savings/states. That is you can go to any
hospital in Germany or France, etc. and can have a brain surgery done and it will cost you about $50, whereas same thing in US if you dont have health
insurance will cost you $500,000.00 - unless of course you are in the US congress or Military, then you get same treatment/cost as the European
citizen get from their health care system.
And all this is possible because of the wall street backed media in USA controls
what people think, and lets not forget this media machinery is not just Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox, etc. but it is also Microsoft, Google & Yahoo. So EU is doing the right thing finally waking up to the threat that the US media
machinery poses to the real Democracy & resulting Quality of life that they have in Europe. Another way you can see all this is by the fact that the US $ keeps falling against Euro. Because once someone sees Europe for a few weeks,
then they realize what a piece of crap US has become, and it has become so not because US is fundamentally worst than Europe, but because we have no real Democracy here in US since the Big Media controls what people think.
Do we want the same for in Europe? If you say No, then high time to understand and fight the threat that US Big Media sources such as Microsoft, Google & Yahoo present.
But you may say, "hey, we need Operating System and Search engine...., what are we to do if we boycott Microsoft, Google & Yahoo??"
For OS, switch to open source OS such as Linux Ubuntu.
For search engine switch to Open source search engine such as Anoox.
So, what we're seeing as a proxy instead is application of the new Microsoft animus doctrine, something that's just shy of the magic words (shhh...essential facility doctrine).
This doctrine is exceedingly narrowly applied - to a whole conmpany and all of its products, now and in perpetuity.
By those that are shedding tears over this faux-situation, there is nothing that a market-leader like Microsoft could propduce that would not be shackled by regulators.
Certainly, that looks good in the short run to some competitors, but bad in the long haul for consumers.
-Markus
Recently, Symantec is doing their best to follow suite... but many are blastpheming Symantec when the real culprit is Microsoft!!!
Walt
- Europe
- by lucy_international January 26, 2007 12:47 AM PST
- The U.S. is crap compared to Europe you say?
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(19 Comments)Have you ever LIVED in Europe? Have you ever even been to Europe? I have... and unfortunately I am still here.
While the U.S. has yet to figure out it's health care system I would never be envious of governments in the EU. You will never truely understand what freedom is until you've lived here.
How about a government that makes it ILLEGAL to sell merchandise after a certain time of day and on Sundays? How about a government that makes it ILLEGAL to wash your car in your drive way or Mow law from 1 - 3 p.m.. Or do your laundry in your OWN house after 8 p.m.. OR taxes people up the wazoo to allow non-citizens live in your country and get paid more with every child that they have.
Do you know how great America is? There is no uptopian society, and we have issues of our own, but don't think for a minute that Europe is better off.