[rmrfstar]

Take a look at the issue from another point of view. Predatory pricing and bundling are two destructive ways to compete.

Predatory pricing is just dumping. You sell something below cost until your competition goes out of business, then you either raise prices or hold prices constant but reduce quality (eg Amazon selling counterfeit books).

Bundling is requiring people to purchase A+B in combination. An example would be a gourmet ice-cream maker that is actually famous for chocolate but only sells 50% chocolate, 50% vanilla.

You can see this move as a combination of bundling and predatory pricing. Microsoft did this with Defender too. Their strategy is to starve nascent competitors for revenue in a niche area so they can never mount a direct attack on the core business.

[willyg123]

> then you either raise prices or hold prices constant but reduce quality (eg Amazon selling counterfeit books)

I can't think of one example of a company killing a competitor via free products and then raising prices.

And let's not pretend Amazon's counterfeit book problem was part of the business plan.

[bearcobra]

Defender is a good example of why we might not want regulators to decide product categories. To me it seems perfectly reasonable that an operating system would offer a malware protection feature. Just because a feature wasn't included in a previous version and an aftermarket offering was developed, shouldn't mean that a vendor can't improve the product by adding it in.

[rmrfstar]

The regulator wouldn't have to do anything more invasive than say, "Microsoft will charge its development cost or greater for any additional features that are currently offered commercially".

Yes, that would create some accounting overhead. But it's a small price to pay to keep Godzilla from eating the villagers' livestock.