Defensio: finally a competitor for Akismet

I must admit that I am a happy user of Akismet. I remember the times when I thought I can approve the comments posted on this blog manually and not have to use a software solution that I didn’t trust so much (how naive I was). Well, after a while I just realized that this was just impossible and I started using Akismet… the result? I practically forgot about the comment spam problem. I am just checking the akismet stats and I just see how much trouble it has saved me:

Akismet has caught 120,722 spam for you since you first installed it.
You have no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day. :)

Wow… 120k? In less than one year? I am sure other bloggers have much bigger numbers… but still. It makes you think…

A few days ago I read on the Akismet Blog that they are welcoming a new competitor: Defensio.
This is great news, but why would I want to change from Akismet? Personally I don’t want to change. I don’t have any reason to do this.
Why are they promoting their competitor? Probably they are confident that many peoples will think the same as me. If I was a new user and had to choose one of the two solutions from their websites most certainly I would have chosen Defensio ;-) .

While I will continue to use Akismet as long as I don’t have any reason to change, I am happy that there is a new serious competitor that I can choose if needed. Competition is always a good thing and hopefully will make both solutions better, bloggers happy and comment span a forgotten problem!