Quote:
Originally Posted by zing
why are they using such an out of date version of Kaspersky?
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Virgin don't develop PC Guard themselves, they buy it in from a company called Radialpoint, based in Canada. Radialpoint also provide the PC Guard software, unbranded, as 'Freedom', and supply it to at least one of the US cable operators too. Radialpoint recently decided that the effort of writing their own AV software was perhaps wasted, so decided to license Kaspersky.
Kaspersky provide their own product, so in providing the PC Guard software they are effectively opening up an avenue of competition with themselves. If they don't license the
ne plus ultra version there's a benefit to their potential customers in "upgrading". Admittedly, the amount that Radialpoint (and then Kaspersky) pocket from a PC Guard installation will probably be quite small - I imagine that the licensing is a block sum rather than a per-user basis, which has the advantage of smoothing the revenue curve. It also opens a new income stream for Kaspersky, in that iirc they don't offer a free product, but at the price that it's watered down to avoid cannibalising their main offering