The 1990s "antivirus" industry was able to suppress most malware source and executable distribution. You could only find it in small print run zines, or the very occasional book. All that led to was people typing the source in themselves. The result was a proliferation of minor variants.

My guess is the suppression held back the tide of Windows malware a year or two, but also gave MSFT a few years of fat, dumb and happy ignorance. Nimda, Code Red, Word macro viruses, etc hit Windows hard. If jokey small threats had been as available as they are today, MSFT might have been able to ramp up rather than get buried.