Relations between AV companies

Hi,

I have been watching for some comments, especially on the blog pages of some antivirus companies where stuff from other AV companies give some replyes. I see thet Mr. Vesselin Bontchev (from F-prot) is pritty active with this. I say this just for example. Look for this link on F-Secure blog page http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/ and reply from Mr. Bontchev http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/comments.html?PostID=00001347.

I also found once on MCafee blog page pritty aggressive comment from Vesselin on MCafee researcher blog post.

Then go on Sophos website and find some articles how they are better then Symantec and MCafee and so on.

I know that they see each other on many conferences and gatherings, but what is their real relation in the terms of business. I also know that they exchange virus samples, but then You see something like these comments.

I must say that i haven't found many comments where one AV company write something on it's own website about other AV company, especially not saying something about detection rate.

Maybe I am missing something but what do You think about relations between AV companies and their stuff?

 

I think they're similar to competitors in any other technically oriented industry.

The technical staffs generally know or know of each other from the primary and trade literature as well as purely technical meeting related to the industry - and there's usually a fairly good natured and generally productive rivalry.

On the business end, there's probably nothing aside from a general effort to keep the industry well positioned in the eyes of the consumer.

As for companies (or employees) being critical of competitor products, you don't make inroads by pointing out "how bad" product X is, you market a product by emphasizing how good your own effort is with respect to specific traits, possibly with a comparison to other vendors offerings. That's basic marketing. You sell on "being good", not on being different from someone else's "bad". You also have to recognize that good and bad are situational traits. For example, very touchy heuristics may be useful in scanning email attachments in a business environment. The same trait can be bad for a home user.

Blue