Everyone in the United States has heard of the leading antivirus vendors Symantec, Mcafee, Computer Associates, and Trend Micro. These companies have market-leading presence in the United States.  Microsoft, as well, has plans become a key player in this market.  Microsoft acquired intellectual property and technology from GeCad software in 2003, a company based in Bucharest, Romania.  They also acquired Pelican Software, which had a behavior based security as well as Giant Company Software for spyware and Sybari Software, which manages virus, spam, and phishing filtering.

A lot of discussion has centered on whether Microsoft with come to own a dominant position in the antivirus market by simply bundling its technologies with its operating systems at no charge.  This is a similar technique applied in other markets such as word processing and Internet browsers.
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