"Since the $2B spyware cottage industry is exclusively a Microsoft problem".
It continues to amaze me that people who obviously do not understand the computing market can write articles for it as though they are experts. Spyware and viruses are written for and appear in every major operating system daily. Admittedly MS, has its share of ill written s/w, but the entry point for malware is often through s/w written by other vendors. As for why MS OSs have so much malware, MS operating systems are the favorite target for those writing malware because it represents the biggest percentage of the consumer computing market with over 95%. For those actually reading market trends, one would notice that the apple OSs are a growing target for malware as its market share is also growing. Lastly, malware penetration is also due to users lack of understanding of this topic and their ease of installing just about everything they come across.

Competition is certainly healthy, but there is no doubt that MS entry into this market threatens the current balance. To be fair however, MS defender and the Malicious S/W removal tool did bring value into the market and we should give this a fair chance while being skeptical. MS charging a small fee for this product, may actually be good. It would allow other vendors to exist in this market while offering competition.

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