Eugene Kaspersky vs Microsoft

Here’s the main course:

We think that Microsoft has been using its dominating position in the market of operating systems to create competitive advantages for its own product. The company is foisting its Defender on the user, which isn’t beneficial from the point of view of protection of a computer against cyberattacks. The company is also creating obstacles for companies to access the market, and infringes upon the interests of independent developers of security products.

Therefore:

We’ve taken the decision to address official bodies in various countries (including the EU and Russia) with a request to oblige Microsoft to cease its violation of anti-competition legislation and to remove the consequences of that violation.

Specifically:

To oblige Microsoft (i) to provide new versions and updates of Windows to independent developers in good time so they can maintain compatibility of their software to Windows; (ii) explicitly inform the user of the presence of incompatible software before upgrading Windows and recommend the user to install a compatible version of the software after the upgrade; (iii) always explicitly ask the user for his/her approval to enable Windows Defender.

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Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is also making a move to push off various foreign software providers from the country. The government sees Microsoft as a major threat as Putin believes that some Microsoft products like Office and Windows can be potentially used by governments of other countries to spy on Russia.

Microsoft is facing difficult times in Russia. The Kaspersky complaint is an addition to Microsoft's woes in the country and if found guilty, Microsoft may to pay huge fines to Russian antitrust agencies.

Microsoft has not issued any statement on Kaspersky's allegations but it is likely that the company will release its official stance over the allegations.

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... push off various foreign software providers from the country

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...LinkedIn failed to shift data of users on Russian servers to comply with the country's laws.

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xterra said:

Paul, do you have any more information, or speculation, or guesses, or maybe a contact with Sylvia Browne's ghost, that would help us figure this out?

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1. Putin would like to have his team of black hats take control of many PCs on the planet. Stolen emails didn't help him gain enough more power.
2. He order's the Russian security company that he controls via threat of jailing the workers to file this action against Microsoft.
3. This will force Microsoft to remove the built-in AV system's automatic protection scheme that has it step in when third party AV software becomes incompatible with Win10 after a major update (a really cool feature that I think the complaint calls out for blocking).
4. Putin's bad guys release something that makes Microsoft send out an emergency update to the core security model.
5. As soon as all third party AV stops working the Russian bad guys send out a massive wave of malware that takes control of hundreds of millions of PCs. (Defender can no longer step in to protect the PCs)

Giordano said:

Personally I am very pleased that Microsoft has at last provided reasonably good security features/anti-virus as an inherent part of its Windows system. I think that that is truly a basic requirement and is an overdue necessity for all operating systems. In some ways I see it as I see human vaccinations- all computers should have at least minimal protection, not only for the benefit of the individual computers but for the Internet community as a whole.

If third party anti-virus (etc) suppliers can provide products that do even better jobs at security than does Microsoft (more conveniently, more comprehensively, etc) then people will buy them too.

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Giordano said:

Personally I am very pleased that Microsoft has at last provided reasonably good security features/anti-virus as an inherent part of its Windows system.

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