Microsoft AntiVirus and Spyware Software

For those of you that haven’t heard the roars yet MS have released a beta of their spyware detection software. Now that they’ve got both this and an AntiVirus product on the market it’s time for people like Symantec to start watching over their shoulders.

Now my issue with this isn’t that Microsoft wants to enter (and by extension dominate) this very lucrative market, instead I want to raise, what seems to me anyway, a big conflict of interest. Lets suppose that Microsoft do make some sales in this market (although why anyone would ever buy a version one or two MS product is beyond me…), they are (in most cases) making money off holes they added to the system to start with.

In much the same way that offering developers a bounty for bugs that are found and fixed in their own code is a terrible idea this new revenue stream seems to be promoting quite a nasty feedback loop.