Exactly. 99% of the "additional features" are pure, useless bloat and I don't want to pay for them.
If Kaspersky had an offering that combines their definitely superior scanning engine with Defender's/MSE's stupidly easy and unobstructive UX, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
(Well, maybe not a heartbeat. Would be nice if their website worked without enabling JS and didn't ask me to download PDFs afterwards… seriously?)
But I think the point is the user should decide if they want this bloat not Microsoft. I agree I would never use kaspersky or norton or any other system like this, but there are people who do want to use them. It's the individuals choice to use these systems, not Microsofts. But this is the model Microsoft are going towards and if we don't like it, lets stop using and promoting them.
> the user should decide if they want this bloat not Microsoft
The average windows user hasn't a clue whether a piece of software is bloat, or really important
One of the most common issues I come across when fixing PCs of friends or relatives is "my antivirus thingy says I need to buy it or I'll get viruses" and my solution is always the same: uninstall whatever version of Kaspersky, or Norton or AVG shipped with the machine and replace it with Defender/Essentials, which just works, and more importantly, is practically invisible while doing it. Frankly, the tactics used by AV companies to try and scare users into buying their software are downright immoral.
Microsoft is losing out to Apple, who have no qualms about deciding what you can and can't have on their platform (Flash anyone?). From a marketing point of view I can definitely understand why they would do this.
For every legitimate product/service on Windows platform MS has to fight a tsunami of crap, which reduces battery life, prevents shut down/sleep, increases startup time, etc, etc
Especially with sw breaking between versions (even from major vendors) because they never followed best practices
The fighting battle he mentions is also being fought by MS, against a lot of enemies as well
I feel like the perfect compromise would be to separate the definition and engine/UI components and allow some interoperability between the two. So if I want to, I can use Kaspersky/McAfee's definitions (probably on some kind of paid subscription), but the engine/UI is Defender, so no bloatware or nag screens. Conversely, if I want to, I can install Kaspersky for whatever extra bits they do, but still fetch the latest definitions from Microsoft.
If Kaspersky had an offering that combines their definitely superior scanning engine with Defender's/MSE's stupidly easy and unobstructive UX, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
(Well, maybe not a heartbeat. Would be nice if their website worked without enabling JS and didn't ask me to download PDFs afterwards… seriously?)