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Intel Completes McAfee Acquisition
angry tapir writes "Intel has completed its US$7.68 billion acquisition of security vendor McAfee, the chip maker has announced. The all-cash deal makes Intel a security industry powerhouse, giving it a broad range of consumer and enterprise security products. Intel had been working to get the deal approved by US and European Union regulators since it was announced last August. The European Commission, in particular, had expressed concerns that Intel would give McAfee special treatment when it came to its processors and chipsets, locking other security vendors out of the technology."
Are they going to give you a discount for the cores you waste on their antivirus product?
I can understand(with their push toward embedding lots of exclusive features in their chipsets: IAMT) why they might want an AV company; but why McAfee? 7.68 billion will buy you a damn lot, including a variety of smaller vendors with better technology. As for brand name, Intel already has that. Why McAfee?
I'm curious why Intel would be interested in acquiring an anti-virus company. What assets would be useful to a chip-maker? Do they plan to integrate anti-virus into their chips? Or does having access to McAfee's assets somehow give Intel insight into how to improve the security of personal computing via specially designed chips? Does anyone have any idea why this was a "good move" for Intel?
Personally I'm a little more worried that they would have tech that runs slow on AMD processors (much like their compiler does). Though not too worried - current regulation and cross-licensing deals seem to maintain a reasonable balance.
$7.68 billion sounds almost worth it to make sure everyone at the company is fired and never allowed to write software or answer phones or manage a business again.
I mean, I didn't read TFA but I can't imagine any other reason for buying McAfee so that has to be the reason, right?
Inspired by Intel's purchase, Microsoft buys HBGary for 7 squintillion dollars.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
They turn the "suck" knob from ten up to eleven on McAfee products? My guess: they will achieve "synergy" in 6-12 months.
...and shut their crummy operation down. That would be a public service.
The more things change...the more they stay the same... Intel will keep it for a while, and then sell it to Symantec, like they did with the last AV product they had (anyone remember LanDesk??)
What about virus checking on mobiles and laptops? If you had antivirus on a chip, especially with an updateable firmware on a high-speed flash, it could go a long way towards securing any device that is both mobile (wattage-sensitive) and has a large disk.
Typically antivirus does scanning on read or write, which means doing a small shitload of tests on EVERY disk I/O. You almost have to have those tests already loaded into ram, though, because disk reads are abhorrently slow compared to all other processor speeds; alternately, if antivirus-on-chip were feasible, it would yank them from very close, very fast flash one (or a set) at a time, without robbing CPU cycles or taking up space in RAM; and anytime that no disk reads/writes are done, it's simply turned off altogether.
480+ patents; same reason why amd bought ati and probably with equally as disastrous results.
With a budget of 7.68 billion dollars, do you think you could produce a halfway decent antivirus? How about one that's better than McAfee's? I'd bet I could.
I'd be shocked if it cost that much to develop a new mainstream/enterprise operating system from the ground up.
Congratulations, John McAfee.
Intel found out antivirus are a good way to use processor time. Now they need to also hire some clandestine Russian virus programmer.. =)
Most plausible answer: Deep in Intel R&D labs, Skynet gained self-awareness and decided to act against McCaffee through an acquisition. Either that, or someone at acquisitions fucked up after being ordered to "go out and buy me a coffee"
it's cost Intel even more than that by damaging THEIR brand by being associated with McAfee. It's a crazy-ass move, unless there's some dynamite IP in their no one else is aware of?
Speaking as an admin who is stuck supporting McAfee's ePO for a few thousand workstations ... yes, yes it does.
Unfortunately, all of the other vendors also suck.
And STILL McAfee doesn't have a bootable CD with their product on it.
And their "enterprise" distribution methodology sucks bandwidth (why send the ENTIRE 100MB+ file to each distribution point instead of just a diff file).
Intel should have paid them $200 dollars for that piece of shit company.
AppRemover may help you. It can remove a LOT of the anti-virus disasters out there. Even if you don't have the "admin" password for Symantec.
You can find it via Google.
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My second-choice x86 vendor is now bonded to my second-to-last choice security suite; unfortunately these are now both the 1st choice of my company.
Yay.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
No wonder Windows "security" still stinks, they're supporting a multi-billion dollar parasite "security" ecosystem.
My opinion of McAfee is in general on par with other peoples, their software is not as effective as others; is buggy; takes a good chunk of cpu time.
Has anyone at Intel actually gotten any end users and other IT professionals opinion of the product? I'm sure that this is going to go down in business and computer history as a historic blunder and waste of money on Intel's part. I'm sure that anyone here can reel off a dozen cases of acquisitions that ended up being the worst decision in the company's history i.e. Time Warner buying AOL comes to mind.
I think Intel got ripped off IMHO. I remember years ago, back in the early 1990's, when Mcaffee was actually a decent anti virus product for DOS and was even command line based and did the job pretty good... now years later its bloated crapware that businesses seem to love running (Either mcaffee or god forbid Norton).
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Aah, now it makes sense. Mod parent up please.
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I have been trying to test out McAfee on Linux for a year now and
1. I can't get a virus to install, they all keep asking for Windows.
2. Because of #1, McAfee is not finding anything.
I sure hope Intel fixes this, because I sure feel left out with no virus's or spyware on my Linux box.
I'm just trying to remember when I last installed McAffee on a PC. I've uninstalled it quite a number of times to improve system performance however. There are more lightweight, effective, CHEAPER products out there! And when I say cheaper, I don't mean just initial cost and subscription renewal charges. I also include the cost of the time and effort that is needed to remove the crap that MacAfee let past AND restore/rebuild damaged apps and data.
Damnit, AC, this is _not_ icanhascheezeburger. Act your URL.
When will they be getting around to fixing the defects in their memory management unit (MMU)
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Taco: I only read this site for the entertainment value .. :)
same reason why amd bought ati and probably with equally as disastrous results.
Disastrous results ? Since AMD acquired ATI, the quality of their blob drivers under Linux has massively increased, and they have actively collaborated for open-source drivers.
I can't speak for the Windows side (much, except that my brother seems happy with it), but on the penguin side of things, the acquisition from AMD has done quite some good.
(and the main reason is that they wanted a foot in the juicy GPGPU market, in order to distinguish their offer from Intel - which is mainly CPU and only offers entry-level GPUs)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Is Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini incompetent?
Nobody expects the McAfee Inquisition!
CPUID returned: "AuthenticAMD"
Optimizing for: i386.
Please ask the Geek Squad(tm) to upgrade your computer to the latest Intel Celeron(tm) processors.