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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."
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!
...and shut their crummy operation down. That would be a public service.
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.
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"
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).
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
I've noticed a fresh Java update today, and its installer bugged me to also install McAfee AV (where before it used to be pushing OO.org) - checkbox enabled by default, of course. Now that is synergy.