The release of the update reignites the debate on the monopyle
The rivalry between the main web browsers is undoubtedly one of those that has benefited users the most (up to a certain point). For several years certain browsers have dominated the market either because of a certain "monopoly" of "some" company or also because the web browser at the time came to offer better features than its competitors.
Up to this point everything sounds reasonable, even the fact that certain features are "copied" could be considered permissible, since this leads the same competition to make an effort to improve their product and consequently, as I have mentioned, users obtain these benefits.
On the other side of the coin we have "unfair" competition, which of the best known cases is that of a certain search engine that used its product for its own benefit, but also affected its main competition and yes, we are talking about the case Chrome vs. Firefox.
And it is that speaking of the case, news has gone viral which is about a recent release of a update by Microsoft of its Windows Defender anti-malware software.
The interesting thing about the news is that this update «now allows users to benefit from the fix” from a 5 year mistake which affected the performance of Firefox. If the maneuver has the merit of providing users of said browser with a much smoother browsing experience, it is about relaunching a debate on Microsoft's abuse of a dominant position.
" Interesting. I wonder if it has something to do with Microsoft having its own browser? I'm sure they want it to work better than the competition,” commented one user.
“The impact of this fix is that on all computers that rely on Microsoft Defender Real-Time Protection (which is enabled by default in Windows), MsMpEng.exe will consume significantly less CPU resources than before when monitoring dynamic behavior. of any program through ETW (Event Tracing for Windows). For Firefox, the impact is particularly significant because Firefox (not Defender!) relies heavily on VirtualProtect, which is monitored by MsMpEng.exe via ETW. We believe that on all of these computers, MsMpEng.exe will consume about 75% less CPU resources than before when monitoring Firefox,” said one of the Mozilla developers who discovered the source of the error.
And is that in 2016, the international news agency AP (Associated Press) issued a statement according to which the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), the Russian competition regulator, has opened an antitrust investigation against Microsoft. It started with a complaint filed by Eugene Kaspersky and his antivirus software company. The Russian publisher accused Microsoft of abusing a dominant position to remove independent antivirus publishers under Windows 10, in favor of Windows Defender.
Accusation founded by Kaspersky? Russian security firm paranoia? What you should know about the security software that Microsoft includes in every version of Windows is that it allows users of your system to have basic protection features without the need to purchase or install third-party software.
Starting with Windows 8, for example, the Microsoft security software built into Windows is automatically disabled when it detects that a third-party product is installed and up-to-date. On the other hand, if the third-party product expires, the user will be notified by Windows and if they do not react after a certain time, then Microsoft deactivates the expired product and reactivates Windows Defender. This is one of the existing mechanisms in Windows.
Sure, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are already obsolete but Microsoft has decided to release a patch version for these versions of its operating system. In addition, Mozilla engineers announce that the latest discoveries made during the analysis of the strange Defender bug will help Firefox further reduce CPU usage with all other antivirus programs, not just Defender this time.
Source: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/