One could argue Microsoft doesn't need to turn a profit so they can afford to be less intrusive, but the truth is that I would pay for MSE. I wouldn't pay for any of the others.
MSE's existence makes a ton of sense when you realize the reason for its creation. It was developed to reduce Microsoft's own support workload, as a significant proportion of Windows support tickets are caused by both malware and belligerent antimalware. MSE justifies its existence by reducing OS support costs rather than by annoying users into paying for antivirus. So Microsoft's incentive is simply to have users use MSE, which is nicely aligned with delivering a clean quiet positive user experience.
I was under the impression that MSE routinely did OK in AV benchmarks and rarely even ever held the top spot. How is it a thousand times better?
Or does it's ability to keep you safe not really factor into your analysis of the software?
What I want from my AV then, is to catch the most obvious (and thus numerous) ones, and do so in a way that doesn't bother me. MSE just doesn't get in the way. It updates silently. It scans silently. It detects silently, ask you for something but take the safe course by default. You are in a full screen app ? It doesn't crash everything trying to take control, it just deals with the threat and show a red icon in the tray.
It doesn't make my computer safer than the other, but it makes me lose way less time when it does its job.
I'm just confused by all of the mad-love for MSE. It's good, but I never thought it was the best myself, and I've not seen any objective reasoning for calling it the best.