I just updated my Norton Internet Security application and cursed a little bit about the installation process which requires that you use another Symantec program to uninstall the previous version before you install the new one. I had to wonder why, since every other upgrade I've ever is a completely automated process.

Now I might have a clue.

Microsoft, again recognising late that it had failed to seize upon this thing called security, is now about to bundle its own security solutions within Windows Vista and further enforce new security policies that lock out some third-party security solutions altogether. Vendors Symantec and McAfee have looked into the future and realised that people may one day speak of them in the way that we now speak reverently of the early builds of Netscape. This time, history is on their side; court cases and commissions have found Microsoft guilty of antitrust violations, and the security vendors are now using these to argue their point. Unfortunately for Symantec and McAfee, time may have already run out; Microsoft is ready to ship Vista to manufacturers within the next few weeks.

Has Microsoft already been making it difficult for Symantec and McAfee? I don't know enough to say, but it seemed curious nonetheless.

I am of two minds as it concerns Microsoft's plan to incorporate native security into Windows Vista--it seems to me that this should have been the case from the get-go. This may be a case of 20/20 hindsight, but spam, adware, viruses and other malicious efforts to compromise PCs are so ubiquitous that to run a PC 'naked' is a guarantee that you'll be running a brick inside of a week. It just makes sense that a PC's operating system should have a built-in security component.

Symantec and McAfee are undoubtedly upset by the prospect of losing their businesses--who wouldn't be--but you have to ask yourself what kind of moron would establish a business on the good graces of Microsoft. Its not like there is no precedent for former high-flyers crushed by Microsoft's coopting of the market segment--Lotus, Word Perfect, Netscape and dozens of smaller companies have fallen victim to Microsoft's willingness to let someone else do the trail-blazing while they set up a toll-booth.

The other side of this coin is precisely the "doomed relationship" scenario between Microsoft and its partners. Presumably prospective investors in nascent technologies will think three times before they sink millions of dollars in a new consumer software technology based on the Windows OS. That may not hurt Microsoft much in the short term, but it does hurt consumers, and long-term it could hurt Microsoft as well should a viable competitor arise.

I use Linux everyday, and while its not a casual-user-friendly OS (the lovely bunny would argue that neither is Windows..), that's a relatively minor obstacle as Apple has demonstrated with its X system (using UNIX--an OS no more "friendly" than Linux in its native format...). My bet is that the latest and greatest software innovations aren't going to be with Windows in the future-- thanks to the greed of Bill Gates etal.

Even though I've been a Windows user for 20 years, I am seriously considering Apple as my next PC.