This news article seems to suggest that if Microsoft began to bundle its own anti-virus software with its OS, it would be grounds for an anti-trust action.
Can someone explain why that would be the case? Seems to me that if I develop an OS, and can make it better and more robust by incorporating a good anti-virus component, more power to me … I’ve created a better product. I’ve not squeezed anybody out.
(I am putting this in GQ since I believe it has a factual answer, ie. legal definitions and precedents)
IANAL, but the point is that with bundling, it’s not whether your product is better, it’s how you distribute it. If Microsoft were to bundle their AV software with Windows, they would arguably be abusing their position as by far the largest OEM software supplier to get their product out there without giving consumers the opportunity to choose. Most people, when presented with something free and pre-installed will simply settle for that; not because it’s better, but because it’s there. MS are the only ones with the opportunity to get their product into this position, so they would gain an unfair advantage. All in all it’s pleasantly surprising that they’re choosing to sell it separately. They seem to be improving their practices of late.
Anyway, that’s my intuitive understanding of the situation - apologies that it’s not the lawyerese you might be after. If it’s precedent you want, though, Microsoft themselves have been convicted of precisely this behaviour on both sides of the pond - in the States with respect to Internet Explorer (link) and in Europe with respect to Media Player (link). They just settled a case with Sun over broadly similar behaviour regarding the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine, too.
If Microsoft had 31% of the OS market, it would perhaps be okay for them to create antivirus software and then include it along with the OS. A company marketing an antivirus line could concentrate on the versions that run under the other operating systems, and if theirs is better than Microsoft’s they get good solid income from the users of the other operating systems long enough to persevere and market their product to users of the Microsoft OS as a “better than stock” improvement over the free bundled Microsoft antivirus. (It’s a lot harder to do that when Microsoft has 97% of the OS market, which is why it becomes anticompetitive).
I say “perhaps” because Microsoft could supply its antivirus geeks with information about the inner workings of the Microsoft OS that aren’t available to McAfee and Symantec and other competitors, and could also have its operating system geeks write hooks in the OS itself that call routines in the Microsoft antivirus software but which don’t prompt a similar checking routine by the McAfee, Symantec, etc. 3rd party competitors. That’s also anticompetitive.
Some of you will be saying “But we get a better product if we let the OS folks design all this stuff in-house, precisely because they do know all the ins and outs of the OS. Why should we have to use crappy software packages just to placate the Gods of Free Market Competition? Just give us what works the best and don’t worry about this stuff”.
Well, that’s more or less what you’ve got now if you’re using a Windows machine with MS Office and Internet Explorer and Outlook. (It is ahemalso more or less what you’ve got now if you’re using a Mac with AppleWorks and all the iLife applications, and Apple is getting a free ride on this one because of its small market share among personal-sized computers, ignoring the fact that it has a better than 97% market share of operating systems that run on Macintosh hardware. And I say this as a Mac evangelist who drinks the Kool-Aid, I love the Mac but this trend worries me). And, face it, the stuff that comes from the same folks who wrote your OS is not always the best. And in the areas where the company responsible for your OS has (or has historically had) a near-monopoly on the software in question, with little outside competition, it kinda tends to suck.
Aside from that, though — pretending for the moment that this were not the case — our economy is a free market system based on the notion that better products win out in a competitive environment. Flaws though that notion may have, it does seem to have produced better results than a centrally planned system. Guess what kind of system we’re talking about if we argue in favor of a single company planning and designing all aspects of the software you use? Monopolies are verboten within capitalism for entirely capitalist reasons, not as lefty redistributivist sops to giving to the have-nots.
Actually back in the DOS 5.0 and 6.0 days Microsoft DID include antivirus software. MSAV (Microsoft Anti-Virus). It was inferior in many ways to the other products out at the time and was eventually scrapped from DOS at 6.2.
Though the other posters raise valid points, the real issue is that such a move might constitute “horizontal tying.” HT occurs when a company bundles one unrelated product with another in an attempt to supress competition. For example, let’s say I’m a big company that has a 90% market share of microwave ovens, but to buy one of my microwave ovens, you also had to buy a toaster - and the reason I’m doing this is to hurt my competitors that also make toasters.
This is what happened in the microsoft case. The court decided that operating systems and web browsers were separate products and that the reason MS integrated the two was to hurt netscape, their primary competitor. If MS were to suddenly bundle an anti-virus program with their OS, they might be subject to allegations that they were tying two unrelated products in an attempt to squelch competition.
To be fair, with the Apple stuff, you can delete them off your hard disk and your computer is not affected one iota. Dunno about Microsoft’s anti-virus code, but if it’s anything like their previous “bundling” efforts, you can’t get rid of it no matter how much you want to.
But yeah, the big thing here is Microsoft’s monopoly dominance of the field.
If it’s precedent you want, though, Microsoft themselves have been convicted of precisely this behaviour on both sides of the pond - in the States with respect to Internet Explorer (