Thursday, February 09, 2006

Microsoft's OneCare Service is not a new concept!

Despite a lot of press attention Microsoft's OneCare Service is not a new concept in my opinion. It is correct however that the price which has been set today at 50$ is quite low if you see what you get for it. However the concept is not new as for instance McAfee has such kind of product for years! They call it Managed VirusScan and Firewall also known before as McAfee ASAP. However, charging for a service that allows paying consumers to be secured against Internet threats that exploit flaws in Windows will also likely raise sticky issues for Microsoft. Several critics have already questioned whether an operating system vendor should get paid to protect users against defects in its software. Of course it's impossible to give it for free as this could bring a complete business sector down. Was it really necessary that MS stepped into that specific part of the market? I doubt it, and I'm not the only one who has some strange feelings about this... Is this ethically correct?