Microsoft said Thursday that it would enter the consumer antivirus business as part of a subscription service it plans to offer next year.
Microsoft said a companywide trial of the service, called Windows OneCare, would begin next week. The service will include virus and spyware protection as well as PC backup and performance-enhancing functions for Windows PCs.
The move would bring Microsoft into direct competition most notably with Symantec and McAfee, the major publishers of antivirus software and other utilities for Windows PCs.
Microsoft plans to expand the service beyond its 60,000 employees this summer and offer an open trial for consumers this fall. No date has been set for a commercial introduction, but the executive in charge of the new business said it would ultimately be offered as an annual service by subscription.
Microsoft has been developing the service for three years, said Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the Microsoft Technology Care and Safety Group. He said the company was responding to consumer demand for performance-enhancing features -- such as defragmenting disks when the software found it necessary -- as a service priced separately from the operating system itself.
"We realized that many people are unprotected," he said. Microsoft's research revealed that as many as 70 percent of PC consumers do not have the most up-to-date virus protection.
Microsoft's decision to charge a fee is justifiable, he said, because most consumers do not want to be responsible for the care of their PCs but just want them to work correctly.
"I feel better pulling into a garage and saying, `Do it for me,'" he said. "This is targeted at the Jiffy Lube customer."
Reacting to the Microsoft announcement, Symantec, whose products include Norton Antivirus and Norton Utilities, issued a statement saying, "We are prepared to compete on a combination of technology and the back-end infrastructure required to support it; the strength of our relationships with our channel partners; and most importantly, the strength of the relationships we have with tens of millions of consumers."
Microsoft has acquired several antivirus and anti-spyware companies in the last two years, so its entry into the consumer market for computer security had been expected.
Microsoft acquired assets of GeCAD Software, a provider of antivirus technology based in Romania, in 2003.
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