Only a few days after the AusCERT announced that the top antivirus firms are the ones least able to find viruses, Microsoft has catapulted itself into the #2 sales position with…wait for it…agressive pricing. Selling for $19.99 instead of $49.99/year seems to make more people buy your software. Who would have thought? Microsoft was quoted saying:

“We see our comprehensive ‘PC Care’ approach as a new and important direction for consumer PC services and are encouraged to see that more consumers are taking steps to effectively protect and maintain their PCs,” Samantha McManus, a business strategy manager at Microsoft, said in an e-mailed statement.

Yes, it is good to see that they can sell more units at half-price the price of their competitor’s product, but do we believe they are selling better units? Can someone find anything to show that “effectively protect and maintain” translates to a reasonable boost in user safety with One Care versus other products (e.g. fair competition on quality/price) or is this just about distribution targets and sales numbers for Microsoft (e.g. price alone)? In other words, will they consider themselves most successful when they have reached the #1 antivirus product by number of users even though they are found to be the least effective against virus infections? Something about the AusCERT warning tells me the whole AV “industry-leader” ranking system needs an overhaul…