"There were a lot of companies that saw marketing value in being members of Coast. The adware profiteers would like to be involved," Carlson said. "180solutions was moving in the right direction, but they're nowhere near WeatherBug," he said, referring to Coast's first ad-supported vendor member. Gaithersburg, Maryland-based WeatherBug, which makes an eponymous application bundled with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), joined Coast in April. (WeatherBug is hardly a favorite among those concerned about security -- its packaging with AIM sparked hundreds of requests for removal instructions on security mailing lists and bulletin boards.)
With Webroot and Aluria pulling up stakes, the consortium's last remaining founder, PestPatrol, faced pressure to also distance itself from what remains of Coast. It announced its resignation from the group on Monday, but did so reluctantly. "I haven't yet seen a really good, tangible reason why anyone is pulling out," said Sam Curry, vice president of eTrust security management at Computer Associates (CA), which bought PestPatrol in August. "CA feels we have to (resign) because we can't sustain it by ourselves. We feel Coast has dropped below a certain critical mass. It's unfortunate, because Coast was the only group of its kind, and the Internet needs it right now."
In retrospect, the seeds of Coast's destruction were present almost from its inception. Less than two months after the group's official launch, one high-profile antispyware developer publicly and scathingly disavowed the group. Swedish software maker Lavasoft, maker of the Ad-Aware detection program, participated in early talks about creating Coast, but in December 2003 it fired off a press release attacking the group.
"The current leadership's overt agenda to concentrate on revenue generation flies in the face of the spirit of the original mission Lavasoft set forth when we founded Coast," it wrote. "Not only do the other vendor members of Coast focus their collective attention on revenue streams, some also engage in some of the worst practices that Lavasoft was first conceived to fight against." Lavasoft's North American spokesman was traveling Tuesday and unavailable for comment.
Coast's executive director, Trey Barnes, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did several remaining members, including WeatherBug. With its most influential members abandoning it, though, the group is essentially being left for dead.
Some in the antispyware industry say that's for the best. Posters on the Spyware Warrior Web site's bulletin board took a gleeful tone as Coast's defections mounted. SpywareInfo, a site that offers removal tips and publishes a weekly newsletter, ran a report by editor Mike Healan on Coast's unraveling. "Coast was never a particularly relevant member of the community," Healan wrote. "I don't think anyone will miss Coast and I don't imagine that very many will attend the funeral."
Aluria's Carlson and CA's Curry both say that however flawed Coast was, it played a necessary role. "Without standards and without groups that actually effect change, our industry can't survive," Curry said. "This is a rallying cry. At CA, we are completely neutral here as to who owns it or who champions it. We plan to see what emerges, and if nothing else emerges, we'll take a leadership role where we have to."
"Coast served its purpose for a long time. We just needed a housecleaning," Carlson said. "The silver lining here is that the vendors all know one another. Forming a new group will be time intensive, but the relationships have been formed and the mistakes have already been made. We're set for our future discussions to be fruitful."
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