Hence the patch on patch Tuesday (tomorrow).

And the malware will evolve, and so will the defenses...

I'm running Win 8 and I'm not too worried about it as I only visit sites I know to be safe and delete all emails from unknown sources, to be sure to be sure.  Yeah, there's the treat of drive-bys, but hopefully the Tuesday Patch will address those vulnerablities.

I've used Defender on Vista Home Basic, Vista Ultimate 32 bit and Win 7 64 bit since 2007. Other than getting definition updates through WU, I would never know it was there and running. It has NEVER, EVER alerted me to any threats, let alone stop any of them.

At the same time, several 3rd party programs did detect and block and/or allow me to remove various types of malware that made it onto my rigs.

Defender is like a condom with a hole it it. It gives you a (false) sense of security, but if you depend on it alone, you are going to get screwed and in a very bad way.

I can't explain why I haven't just shut it down other than someday, just maybe, it will do its job.

MSE is free because that is all it is worth.

Be that as it may, it has never stopped or attempted to stop any malicious software of any type, spyware, adware, or malware. Therefore, it had nothing to do with security "in general" if its focus was so narrow as to only defend aginst one threat.

The general theory back then was that MS would fall afoul of antitrust concerns if they included an antivirus in their product.

Considering how much heat they've gotten for including a browser and a media player, I think those concerns were fairly valid.

My personal opinion is that caring for the security of their product is Microsofts problem, not anyone elses.

Noone else should (or does) have a say in how Microsoft secures their product, whether there's an existing industry or not.

We'll see if that opinion is generally shared, but I don't expect any government interference.