Google quietly added new Vista-compatible antivirus and spyware protection to its neat Google Pack software, but is it good enough to become the free alternative to the AVG Free suite of apps? Which should you choose to protect your system?

The Google Pack -- Google's neatly packaged bundle of useful free applications -- was quietly updated this week with a new offering of system protection tools, superceding the previous offering of Norton AntiVirus 2005 SE. Google has now struck a deal with Symantec to include Norton Security Scan and PC Tools Spyware Doctor (interestingly, from a Sydney-based software company.) Between these two applications, Google Pack now offers basic (and free) antivirus and anti-spyware protection in addition to the fun stuff like Picasa and Google Earth. And of course, it's now Windows Vista compatible, whereas the previous Google Pack security offering certainly wasn't. But how does Google's free pack stack up against the other popular free anti-virus application, AVG Free? AVG has been offering its free Vista-compatible antivirus and anti-spyware solutions for a while now, and they’ve proven to be very popular. It recently added AVG Anti-Rootkit Free to its free download arsenal, which detects and removes rootkits on Windows systems. 1. Anti-virus compared In the anti-virus stakes, Norton Security Scan is an extremely lightweight application. It’s a downloadable version of Norton Security Check, which is an online system scanner. The version of Security Scan included with Google Pack is slightly different from the one offered direct from Symantec. According to Symantec’s website: “Norton Security Scan is a software tool designed to help you understand if your computer is currently protected from known threats. Norton Security Scan will scan your computer and identify if there are existing viruses, worms, spyware, unwanted adware or Trojans residing on your computer. Norton Security Scan checks to see how your computer is currently protected.” In other words, the one offered by Symantec directly just checks, but can't remove viruses if found. The version bundled with Google Pack does remove viruses if it finds them.