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Google Buys Anti-Malware Security Startup
J Tomas writes "Google has quietly made its first anti-malware acquisition, snapping up GreenBorder Technologies, a venture-backed company that sells browser virtualization security software. GreenBorder's software creates a DMZ (demilitarized zone) between the Windows desktop and programs downloaded from Web pages or opened from e-mail messages in Microsoft Outlook. The early speculation is that Google will add the sandbox technology to the Google Toolbar or release a rebranded version as a standalone download."
or the new yahoo. in a few years we'll be using something else for a search engine. google is buying so much crap and utilizing so little of it. example: google buys dodgeball and leaves it for dead, along comes twitter. so now google buying doubleclick then buys an anti malware company. go figure. theres a few kids in school at the moment that will be millionaires in a few years after they start a new search engine that doesnt have bloat and doesnt sell listing results. google gets to join yahoo in the also ran seat soon.
Interesting idea if it does what I think, at least. Would have figured a sandbox for a plugin was rather intensive processor wise
One thing however, is that on Vista you already have Internet Explorer running in a sandbox (most of the core system services appear virtualized, according to Task Manager), isolated from the kernel. I'd imagine a virtualized virtual machine is a pretty nasty beast on performance.
Definitely a neat idea; especially on an XP box where you don't have the innate ability to run a virtualized IE.
I do run Windows in a VM and do revert to a clean version once a day. Windows has read/write access to a version controlled directory for storing data, but it cannot delete the history thereof.
"WITHOUT the hoops you need to jump through to keep it clean."
Why is it so hard to keep your windows box clean? I run XP semi updated (every so often i check for updates, not regularly) and don't have "MASSIVE" problems that i hear people like you complaining about all the time...
Maybe it is because i am careful? I use firefox (because i prefer it over IE), I scan anything i download or get emailed with online scanners and i use a lot of game/program cracks, i don't scour the net for pron, and i have my boxes (4 of them, all windows, none with these "problems") behind a hardware firewall. I don't even have antivirus installed on my systems, meh...
Once in a great while one of them will get some spyware because of what my kids have done and i can clean it up, but for the most part i'm not rootkitted, full of spayware/viruses, crashing, etc...
Maybe you should be looking at your own actions when using windows instead of complaining about it being such a problem?
(side note) I work in IT personally, and pretty much 90% of the problems that are software are due to user misconduct/error... Windows has come along way since 95...