The buzz around the purchase of HijackThis has begun and I was lucky enough to chat directly with Ed English, CTO at Trend Micro. I wondered if HijackThis would remain a free program or if it would go the route of Site Advisor after McAfee took it over.
Ed said…
“Trend plans to keep HijackThis available as freeware. It is widely available on dozens of download sites and on the trendsecure.com site. We especially recognize the value of the HijackThis web forums who provide personal support to help users solve PC problems. Trend wants to work closely with this web forum community. We are listening carefully to these experts for guidance on what new features to add to future versions of HijackThis.”
Ed also knows good software when he sees it.
“HijackThis has received a 5 star rating from CNET editors and download.com members rated HijackThis as the second most popular anti-spyware software. This is a very honored position to hold, but I would be remiss to not mention that our friend Bill P’s WinPatrol received the number one most popular rating. Congratulations Bill! Both HijackThis and WinPatrol are excellent tools in the war against spyware.”
Obviously, even for a technical type, he knows how to suckup, err… I mean win people over.
In past conversations Ed has made clear how important he thinks the online “community” can be. In a U.S. market dominated by Norton(Symantec) and McAfee he has a big job ahead of him. I’ve never been a fan of either company so I wouldn’t mind some serious competition from someone other than Microsoft.
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