seattlepi.com Microsoft Blog: More from Symantec CEO

February 16, 2005

More from Symantec CEO

Symantec Chief Executive John Thompson was blunt when discussing Microsoft during his keynote address at the RSA Conference yesterday morning, but that was just the start. Later in the day, during a Q&A session with reporters, he was asked repeatedly about Microsoft's move into the security-software market. A few excerpts from his responses:

On the news that Microsoft will come out with consumer anti-virus protection this year: "Actually it's now later than we thought, so it shows you how difficult this challenge is. So the fact that they're going to have something late in the year as opposed to midyear as we had originally forecasted suggests that this is not a problem that's easily solved."
On whether Microsoft's move played a role in Symantec's decision to acquire Veritas: "We had been on a path as a company to be a bigger player in the enterprise security space for a long time, in the enterprise software space for a long time. And so I could care less about what Microsoft does. I'm more focused on what our customers' needs are and how we can do a better job of serving them."

On whether Symantec would raise antitrust objections over Microsoft's decision to offer free anti-spyware protection to Windows users: "I'd rather fight Microsoft in the marketplace because we're convinced we can whup 'em. So this is not about showing up in Washington or whining on someone's doorstep about what Microsoft can or might do. To the extent that they violate the position of prominence that they have, be assured that we'll be watching, but whining in Washington about press releases or pointing to left field by Bill and his team, I mean, of what value is that?"

For more, you can access a webcast and transcript of the session from this page.

Posted by Todd Bishop at February 16, 2005 07:29 AM

Comments

recently, I could not pull up my bank accounts. I have a current subscription with you and I hired a tech to fix my problem and as soon as he removed my norton anti-virus the problem was fixed. Now I have no protection but I have paid for it. what can I do? You guys are too damned hard to contact. I want to talk to someone about this problem but evidently you want our money but don't want to talk to us. Please contact me. Royce Henry

Posted by: royce henry at February 17, 2005 06:57 PM

It's always been a problem with stock option plans that employees would try to promote their stock. This goes for McAfee and Symantec. I hate to tell you what some of our engineering chat has been since pcAnywhere came out and then Microsoft made certain remote features a part of Windows XP. Seems Jim Allchin was being harassed by his mom on the phone. So he wanted to be able to just fix her problems remotely.

We have always had security design standards. Micrsoft has violated all of them. The had no valid testing. The best testers are at my age... 54... not young kids with no engineering experience. I've been a designer most of my life in more than just computers. I don't want to program these machines any more. But I can test these system and find all kinds of bugs. And because I started on a 4 bit machine and wrote floating point math on a PDP-11 in Assembly and built some of the hardware, I know how to test them. A young person can't test because they haven't programmed. And we can't test our own code. But older engineers get burn out. I'm using a wheelchair. Ergonomics are very important to me now. I mentor... Testing is the best way.

I reported the buffer overflow problem to Gates in 1990. But they didn't get it and on one could fix them. Their compilers are really bad. But you need to know binary code to know this. I'm 5 years older than Gates and knew him when he was just 17. I've always felt OK about getting in his face about this stuff. They guys said he would listen to me because of this. Brain Valentine even told me that. Instead of talking about things, we learned to hash it out...

This Gates' style - in your face. I get it. LOL A few months ago, one of the young engineer told me his friend tried to submit a proposal to Gates - in person. His friend was upset because Bill snapped at him and said: "What do you think I am? Stupid?" Bill needs to put up a Blog... Yep. If he doesn't start to blog, everyone is going to quit. His biggest strength in life is the ability to spin in a new direction when he sees something isn't going to work... One Step Closer to Knowing. U2 LOL

Posted by: Joan L. Brewer at February 17, 2005 10:56 PM

I bought a antivirs software from your company a few weeks ago i was suppose to get a rebate back from you i got a letter from you saying i didn`t give adaquite ifromation about buying your product to give me my rebate back i gave you everything i got from bestbuy it`s ok next year i`ll get my software from Mcafree

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