Intel Buys McAfee

Several readers have noted that Intel has agreed to buy McAfee, the computer antivirus software maker, for about $7.7 billion in cash. There is also a press release available if you are into that sort of thing.

Comments

Re:Holy cow

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why would the existence of MS Security Essentials possibly convince Intel to shell out billions to get in on that action?

AV, as it stands, is basically a thankless, reactive chore, with the occasional destructive false positive to brighten your day. Now that Microsoft has come out with a competent(by the standards of the industry) and unobtrusive(by the standards of the industry) free offering from a trusted (if you are running Windows, clearly you trust them to some degree) name, the only gold left in home AV is fool's gold.

There is still some cash to be had in corporate AV, since MS ain't exactly giving ForeFront away; but what would a company whose software experience consists largely of compilers, drivers, and the occasional linux project want getting in there?

And, even if they do have some clever plan involving leveraging their Intel AMT motherboard stuff, why McAfee? There are plenty of smaller, presumably cheaper, outfits that are at least as competent, many more so, and the brand name won't matter once Intel starts using theirs. One imagines that they could have gotten Kaspersky for half as much, if that.

Color me confused.

McAfee haters? there is more to this deal...

[arch]

Wow, I'm really surprised at this announcement and that Slashdot still has my account on profile. Good jobs on keeping that database!!!

But seriously folks. Bashing McAfee? Are you ignorant to exactly what McAfee is? The largest AV player in the Government/Military sector. They have very large banks as customers too. But, I know it is more fun to joke about their AV performance, which is in fact on par with most AV products.

So let me get to the business of trying to decide what this means? It is without a doubt a huge plus for Intel. They have entered into SaaS/cloud email arena with MxLogic, now have a viable FW in the Sidewinder. Can be knocking on checkpoint's gate with a EndPoint Encryption product, is the DLP solution going to rival RSA? Intel gains other network based tools such as IPS/IDS (reconnex), Network Behavioral Analysis, Foundstone, etc.

I say the deal doesn't go through. At least, getting this past federal regulators will be quite an interesting test.

Re:Why?

[tattood]

Anti-virus imbedded into CPU functionality? I'm sure they won't include all the extra crap that causes the "CPU bloat" but the underlying antivirus technology alone could be embedded into the CPU to protect against viruses.