Microsoft has held out an olive branch to some 20-odd adware companies to convince them to agree on a set of best practices for better management of pop-up ads or, as the industry would like to call them, potentially unwanted programs (PUP).
Part of Israel’s so-called Download Valley, some companies have already attended meetings with Microsoft, including Perion Networks, IronSource, Babylon.com, reports sources.
Pop-up ads and software applications appearing out of nowhere seem to have been the nemesis of computer users for a long time.
There are a host of anti-malware products from several reputed companies on the market such as McAfee, Symantec, and even Microsoft, which block these ads.
But as these ads are big revenue generators and some of them are within legal bounds, adware companies work equally hard to devise technological bypasses.
OPSWAT, an IT management solutions company, said that Security Essentials, an anti-malware from Microsoft, commanded a 22% market share in the first quarter of 2014. This is expected to climb to 44%, with three new adware companies agreeing to join the Microsoft initiative, sources familiar with the matter said.
If the adware companies accede to the request, they will be a part of a list of Microsoft-approved adware vendors, with the new rules to be effective from July 1.
The new rules would require adware developers to supply users with an easy way to close ads, to identify programmes that launched them, and a straightforward means of removing the programmes from their computers. In exchange, Microsoft will not flag the adware from these companies as malicious, reports The Wall Street Journal.
