In 2008, after installing an operating system, Chinese PC users had to make a serious decision: which antivirus software to install. It was a decision that cost money—a genuine license carried an annual fee of one or two hundred yuan, while internet cafés and students bounced endlessly between “six-month free trials.” No one expected that this paid market, which had existed for more than a decade, would be completely cleared out over the next three years by the word “free.”
The old listing pages reconstructed by the Winzheng Software History Archive happen to preserve the market ecosystem on the eve of this revolution in full. Today, let’s revisit it chronologically: from Rising’s lion, to Panda Burning Incense, and then to 360’s “free forever.”
The Paid Era: Three Default Choices for PC Setups, with Foreign Vendors at the High End
In 2007-2008, China’s domestic antivirus market was a three-way contest: the desktop lion of Rising Antivirus 2009 became a generational memory; Kingsoft Antivirus 2008 Suite emphasized value for money; and Jiangmin KV2007 carried the lingering prestige of the old KV300 era. Users with bigger budgets looked to foreign products: Kaspersky KIS 7.0 was known for aggressive detection but also for slowing machines down; Norton 360 took the all-in-one suite route; and among geeks, the lightweight NOD32 spread by word of mouth.
The archive pages also retain a distinctive sight from the paid-software era: listings such as the Norton offline virus definitions package dominated download charts year-round—because there were few genuine-license users, “manually updating virus definitions” was a common survival skill.
2007: Panda Burning Incense, the Industry’s Peak and the Apex of Anxiety
The “Panda Burning Incense” virus outbreak at the end of 2006 pushed public anxiety about security to its peak: on infected computers, all program icons turned into a panda holding three sticks of incense. The archive preserves the listing page for that year’s “Wuhan Boy” (Panda Burning Incense) dedicated removal tool, updated in January 2007, right when the outbreak was at its most severe. The arrest of the virus author, Li Jun, became the year’s biggest tech-related social news story.
Panic is the best salesperson. In those two years, the antivirus industry entered a golden age, and its supporting ecosystem flourished: Rising Kaka Internet Security Assistant, Super Patrol, and all kinds of dedicated Trojan removal tools emerged one after another. The archive pages also contain a name that was far ahead of its time technically: Micropoint Proactive Defense. Behind it was the most famous legal controversy in China’s security industry: this product, which did not rely on virus definitions, was framed by others and delayed for three years before receiving approval to go on sale. Only after the person behind the false accusations, then head of an internet monitoring division, was brought down in 2008 did the truth come to light.
2008: Honeymoon and Betrayal
The turning point arrived in the role of a “supporting character.” Qihoo 360 Security Guard did not begin as antivirus software, but as a tool for detecting and removing rogue software—back then, installing one program could give you five toolbars, and 360 built a massive installed base by helping users “pull out the nails.” It was even once an ally of paid antivirus vendors: the archive preserves a May 2008 listing page for the “Kaspersky/360 Deluxe Edition”, where installing 360 came with a six-month genuine Kaspersky activation code, giving each side what it needed.
The honeymoon lasted only until July 2008: 360 launched its own permanently free antivirus. For paid vendors, this was not competition; it was pulling the rug out from under them. Once “free” became an option, the business model of “one or two hundred yuan per year” instantly lost its moral legitimacy. Users voted with their feet faster than anyone had expected.
Clearing the Market: Killing an Industry’s Business Model in Three Years
The dominoes fell one after another: Kingsoft Antivirus announced that it would become permanently free at the end of 2010, and Rising went fully free in March 2011—that lion ultimately failed to defend its annual fee, while Jiangmin gradually faded from the consumer market. The 3Q War at the end of 2010 pushed the conflict to an absurd peak: 360 and Tencent forced users to “choose one or the other,” and “the difficult decision” became one of the first-generation memes of the Chinese internet. After the war, the landscape was clear: security software became free across the board, and the business model shifted toward advertising, traffic redirection, and value-added services.
The cost of “free” slowly revealed itself over the following decade: pop-up ads, bundled software suites, and battles over browser homepages. The true endgame arrived quietly—Windows’ built-in Defender became increasingly capable, and the very act of “installing antivirus software” entered the museum together with the offline virus definitions packages of the past.
Epilogue: The Echo of the Free Strategy
Looking back at this revolution, the business lesson it left behind remains valid today: when a challenger uses free pricing to hollow out the paid foundation of an industry, the incumbent’s technical advantage cannot save its business model. Interestingly, the same script is now being replayed in the AI industry—large model price wars, open-source models challenging closed-source pricing, and “free/open source” once again becoming the siege hammer of latecomers. The benchmark controversy around Qwen 3.8 27B is only the latest scene. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
The listing pages for these old software titles—version numbers, update times, and the editor recommendation star ratings from back then—have all been reconstructed and brought online in the Software History Archive. The archive is for historical preservation and research only, and does not provide any downloads. The previous article, “The PC Setup List of 2008,” is also waiting for you to catch the reference.
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