the Mind’s Chew Toy

With it’s impressive Akismet application, Automattic, Inc. (who also make a little blogging platform known as WordPress), have pretty much cornered the market in terms of website spam filtering. So, when a new product is introduced, do they try to block any and all attempts by that product to gain a foothold in their “house”? No. Instead, they welcome the competition, saying “it’s hard to have a market with one player”.

With so many of us becoming disenfranchised with big business practices the more we find out about them (thanks to the recent Enron fiasco, the Microsoft anit-trust suit, Truth anti-smoking ads and any government election race, just to name a few), having a company who sees competition not only as healthy, but actually looks forward to the competition, is incredibly refreshing. Finally, a company recognizes that competition brings with it new ideas and will help create better products in the long run.

So, kudos to Automattic for extending the olive branch to it’s new competitor, Defensio. Hopefully this competition stays healthy, and we can all look forward to a future with no site spam.