Intel Buys McAfee 377
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.
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Intel Buys McAfee
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"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell
Will they kill it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty please? Just give all their victims - I mean customers - their money back and just kill it off already. McAfee has no right even existing.
Re:Will they kill it? (Score:5, Funny)
mcafee corporate is better then the home ver (Score:3, Funny)
mcafee corporate is better then the home ver and has less bolt in it.
Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver (Score:4, Funny)
Yep, welded software is way stronger.
Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I need to disagree. It slows things down on my work laptop. I so want to replace Mcaffee on this machine and use MS Security Essentials like I have at home. Microsoft actually put out an AV scanner that doesn't feel like a lead weight.
Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. No unnecessary SVChost.exe http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/04/21/1735211/McAfee-Kills-SVCHostexe-Sets-Off-Reboot-Loops-For-Win-XP-Win-2000 [slashdot.org]
Given that McAfee "Oopsie" actually shutdown Intel operations for a day, maybe they do want to take it out back, and put it out of its misery?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> And deprive millions of corporate IT drones of their false sense of security?!?!? Are you insane, man???
It's not the IT drones that you'd be depriving of a false sense of security, it's users and management. Most of us drones realize AV doesn't do much other than bloat our budgets, slow down our systems and waste our time. But the sense of security we get from it is not that we're protected from viruses but that we're protected from the criticism that we didn't do everything possible to prevent a virus
Re:Will they kill it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to drive demand for new processors, sell bloatware. :P
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But McAfee has given so many people so much incentive to upgrade to faster processors.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One has to wonder what Intel was thinking. The *only* thing McAfee had of any worth was name recognition, and due to their total frak up back in April, their name gets recognized for the wrong reason.
We recently moved our corporate network away from McAfee due to lack of decent support.
Just my $0.02.
-JJS
Holy cow (Score:5, Insightful)
That junk is worth $7bn?
Re:Holy cow (Score:5, Funny)
OMG you figured it (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Buy the worst performing AV on planet ever
2) Hand it out for free or some cheap price
3) Let them NEED your CPU upgrades!
4) Profit!!!
Re:Holy cow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Holy cow (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple - to drive sales of their core product.
Intel has a TON of software. Each in some way is to drive sales of Intel processors. Sure you still have to pay for them, but that money's just peanuts. E.g., their compilers emit code optimized for their processors (of course, they also emit crap for non-Intel CPUs).
T
Re:Holy cow (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Apple is the largest retailer of music. Also, they are doing their best to become the most important distributor for TV, Movies and eBooks. Apple sells about $5B per year in thru the iTunes Music/Apps/Movies/TV/Books Store and those sales are growing at about 25% per year. While that's only about 7% of their sales right now, it's growing steadily and likely to be about as profitable as the hardware businesses. It's also likely to equal or outstrip Mac sales within a year or two.
No, Apple is not primarily a distributor, but they are in line to become the biggest distributor. That scares the distribution competition because Apple can afford push down distribution margins to promote high-margin device sales. So, you're right they don't need the money from iTMS but iPhones and iPods and iPads aren't nearly as attractive without iTMS--that's part of what you buy when you buy the device.
And that's the difference. Intel doesn't NEED McAfee, whereas Apple can't really operate without iTMS. Intel might find a way to differentiate future processors by adding industrial-strength security to their chips by integrating AV and management suite facilities with specialized hardware, but Intel has always benefited from being the premiere supplier of open-platform technologies and they are forced to be that way both by the market and by regulation. If they change that significantly to increase margins, they may become vulnerable to attack on both fronts. To me, $8Bn is just too much for McAfee. I think they could have got the same capabilities for a lot less money. McAfee sells low-margin, crappy AV software. They earn a few hundred million a year. Intel earns 4x the return on investment in its existing business (relative to McAfee). Also, I believe the embarrassing products McAfee sells will dilute Intel's brand. In the words of Warren Buffett, as an INTC shareholder "I feel poorer".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That junk is worth $7bn?
No... Intel was up too late and made an impulse buy. It is trying to see if it can throw in McAfee with its sham-wow and shake-weight to trade for the neighbor's old lawnmower.
Re:Holy cow (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine intel has watched the home AV market get gobbled up by MS Security Essentials and may want to join in the free for home use game.
I'd love to see a shakeup in the AV industry as its pretty terrible right now. I'm sick of seeing machines with horrible infections because the trial of the AV has expired. End users cannot be trusted to maintain subscriptions for something they barely understand. I also imagine intel is so deeply in bed with MS that AV is now their problem as well.
McAfee's enterprise products sell for whatever reason. I imagine those will continue to be expensive.
Re:Holy cow (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Holy cow (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but I believe Intel owns Grisoft, which means they already own an antivirus package. I don't get what they're doing here.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Huh... I didn't know that Intel owned a big chunk (not all) of AVG (Grisoft renamed themselves at some point).
Assuming the Wikipedia is accurate, Intel (and partners?) bought 65% in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_Technologies [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is my experience as well. The old "use an up to date AV and don't browse porn sites" line is completely outdated. The modern source of infection is either through using exploits in rarely patched software (Adobe, Flash, Java, etc.) combined with using SEO techniques to boost malware sites to the top of google rankings for big breaking news stories, infecting wordpress and other blog systems en masse, and infecting the servers used to host advertising on major sites (or just buying the advertising str
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"don't browse porn/warez sites" was somewhat outdated advice in the late 90s/early 2000s, and is totally irrelevant today. Viruses are now served to users through scripts in ads while they browse perfectly legit sites. I wouldn't be surprised if the porn/warez sites were cleaner in terms of malware.
Re:Holy cow (Score:5, Informative)
I like truecrypt and MSE for windows systems myself but I am not an IT director.
Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't they have bought something that's actually worth the money?
Re:Strange (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Only to choose between the pest and cholera?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
2) Give McAfee Antivirus away free with every AMD based system sold 3) Wait for masses of users to start complaining how slow and unstable the new (McAfee bundled) AMD based systems are. 4) PROFIT!
Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
McAfee is finally in the hands of someone qualified to figure out how to completely uninstall it.
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
McAfee is finally in the hands of someone qualified to figure out how to completely uninstall it.
Or at least 99.999967217864781687% of it.
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Do you mean 1998.999967217864781687?
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Do you mean 1998.999967217864781687?
--
My 0.02 cents
Well, that's where your 0.02 cents come handy as:
1998.999967217864781687 + 0.0002 = 1999.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
They intend on replacing the software with a looping .gif that pretends to scan your computer when you click on the icon in the systray. Thus they will continue to provide the same core functionality* at a fraction of the processor capability
*core functionality may consist of, and won't exceed convincing idiots that their computer is secure
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
You could buy a cross country railroad for that kind of money!
Finally, some standard units instead of all this USD nonsense!
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, Intel jumps the shark (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF are they thinking. Granted they're sitting on a pile of cash, but this is silly.
If I were an INTC shareholder I would be pretty pissed off.
If they were looking for something to do with the cash, they should have just paid out a nice dividend.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would suggest putting it in a bank. What are they? Scrooge McDuck?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Put down the hashpipe, dude, and take a look at McAfee's balance sheet and cash flow:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MFE&fstype=ii [google.com]
They have total current assets of $1.5B, and total liabilities of $1.8B (I'm ignoring their total assets, because so much of it is in "goodwill" and I think that number is grossly overrated given the bad press they've gotten over the last few years). That means they have negative value of $300 million. Why would you spend $7.7 billion in cash to have a guarantee of losin
All part of their core business (Score:5, Funny)
Intel plans to release a final update to all Mcafee users that will force uninstall the software from their machines, increasing the performance of Intel systems by 300%.
Re: (Score:2)
But even that uninstall tool won't get 100% of it removed.
Re:All part of their core business (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, we could certainly define "the McAfee" to be that... - the length of time of one standard universe. Not much good, probably but...
I asked because although someone is likely to know that you were joking about "the Mcafee" many people do indeed consider a planck-second to be a limit instead of just some number derived from a bunch of other constants, or simple (theortetical) measurement of the passage of time.
Regards.
Lycos part deux (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lycos part deux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The main performance drag is its never-ending HDD thrashing. Constant random reads are murderous for HDDs.
Of course, Intel also make SSDs, which don't suffer quite so much from that.
The press release is fluff (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mcafee has lots of corporate drones who think it's a good idea to install Mcafee on everything, including database servers. When Mcafee then decides randomly to start terminating Oracle as a virus, they do great business blaming someone else.
(Yes, that did just happen to me. No, I don't know why it was on the database server. Sounds like a very poorly thought out corporate policy though.)
YOU ARE EDUCATED EVIL! (Score:5, Insightful)
What??? (Score:2)
Re:What??? (Score:4, Informative)
Does McAfee offer other products of significant value
They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel doesn't have any corporate interests in making things less CPU intensive. They'll give you more power in the same wattage, or the same power with less wattage.
But, really, the more you need to upgrade hardware the better.
What to do, oh what to do... (Score:4, Funny)
A list of better things you could do with $7b:
1. Fill a swimming pool with $100 bills and go nuts.
2. Buy several sky scrappers and blow em up, just for shits and giggles.
3. Buy Kaspersky.
4. Nothing. Absoluetly nothing. Ever again.
Any other suggestions?
Re:What to do, oh what to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
5. Buy Nvidia, and have an on-board graphics card that isn't terrible.
6. Buy AMD. Twice. Getting ATI in the process. Twice.
7. Buy Analog Devices and make a play for the low-powered market.
8. Actually bring Canoe Lake to market.
9. Send everyone in the United States two stuffed Intel Bunnies [flickr.com].
Makes perfect sense (Score:3, Funny)
Perfect match (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel needs people to think they need these faster multi core CPUs they keep cranking out.
And who is better at slowing Windows down to the point of uselessness then Mcafee?
It's a perfect fit. We'll see you slow, bloated software, then also sell you CPUs to make your computer usable.
Don't let any of them near the CPU operations! (Score:2)
Seriously. Your best bet is to stuff them into a closet someplace and forget about them.
Otherwise we'll start having CPUs that take up their own cycles just so they can figure out how to take up more cycles, all the while corrupting any software run on them, cheese-grater'ing your data, and generally prohibiting you from actually USING the machine under the pretense of "entertaining" you with myriad popups, warnings, and better still complete instituting random, undocumented refusals of various portions of
Intel will make good use of McAfee... (Score:2)
$7.7 billion in cash (Score:2)
I guess they brought it in suitcases. Reminds me of the Austin Powers deleted scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgOYMCtv1aw [youtube.com]
Hardware-based AV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like this is the logical goal. Integrate AV at the hardware level and you should see a significant performance increase, plus tasty vendor lock-in.
It's a trusted name with the uninformed (Score:2)
Cash? (Score:2)
Direct quote from my boss (Score:5, Funny)
"I've got a quarter we can flip to see if this is a good or bad thing."
McAfee is crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does anyone use McAfee? It's crap. In my life I've only ever had two "infections" on my PC... both while McAfee was installed and running. It costs money, and yet free alternatives (like Microsoft Security Essentials) typically rank better in terms of protection. And it constantly causes slow-downs, hangs, and even crashes. It's just utter crap. Why would anyone use it? It should be left to die on the vine.
If you currently use McAfee, you should immediately uninstall it (and top paying for it!) and install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. Say good-bye to the bloat and slowness and other complicated crap, as well as the expense.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
McAfee haters? there is more to this deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Worth every penny ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of comments and jokes here about the worth of McAfree ...
And you've got it almost completely wrong. The value of McAfree isn't in their software, its in the fact that it comes preinstalled on a massive amount of computers, it has a subscription model for recurring revenue and LOTS of people use it.
The fact that their flagship product is a pile of crap is irrelevant because people buy it anyway, without hesitation.
McAfee Antivirus might suck and be next to worthless, but McAfee the company is worth a lot of money because people are too ignorant to get the first part.
Second, as far as system slow down, and this one hurts as I hate defending such shitty products ... but ...
ALL ON-DEMAND SCANNERS KILL PERFORMANCE. They open and scan every file (EVERY file, not just exe and dlls) before passing the result along to the actual program.
There is no way around this, the data must be check before it can be used in order to be safe. Well, no matter how fast you right code, it takes a while to scan all the files that go into making even a simple program run. There are thousands of files that get openned when an app like Firefox for Photoshop starts running, and all of those files get read into memory and checked ... BEFORE they are passed along to the app calling them. Unless you invent time bending or something, this will always end up taking a very noticeable amount of time, making your computer seem slow.
Want your computer with McAfee to not run slow? Turn off on-demand scanning. Want a middle ground? Change the on-demand settings to be less agressive, but its probably not going to make much difference since the speed issue is mostly opening and reading the files in the first place.
You won't find anyone with an on-demand scanner that doesn't have these problems.
You also won't find an anti-virus company worth more other than symantec.
So yes, this was a good deal for Intel, even if most of slashdot is too blind to see the logic in the move.
I like slashdot a lot more when it was just real geeks with a clue, you know, before all the angsty idiots who happened to be socially inept and own a computer started calling it home as though they were geeks too.
How Far They've Come (Score:5, Interesting)
20 years ago when I got my first modem (wow it's been that long, I feel old) McAfee was *the* virus scanner. Sysops used it to scan uploads and users used it to scan downloads. Of course back then it was a small command line app that fit on one floppy and ran in 256KB (yes, K) of memory, not the massive piece of bloatware it is now. It was also free... paid versions didn't appear until Windows took over IIRC.
Never would have guessed that they woulda end up developing into a software giant worth $7.7B. And sold to Intel of all companies.
Heard a guy on the business channel speculating that Intel might be wanting it to develop on-chip virus scanners. Sounds like a promising application if it'll speed it up. As it is now scanners as no faster now as it was 20 years ago, but back then we only had 30MB drives to scan so it ran a full scan in under 30 seconds. Now we have 300GB or more and it takes about 3 hours... no wonder people hate virus scanners.
They bought McAfee so they can keep Dell away from (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel did it to fire someone (Score:3, Interesting)
If remember the McAfee bug [slashdot.org] from a few months back, Intel was hit by this bug and shutdown their network. Maybe Intel is forking over the cash to fire whoever screwed up at McAfee and caused this problem.
The login back in the day (Score:3, Funny)
ftp.mcafee.com
licensed
321.
That right there made them more popular than they ever should have been. "everybody had that login"
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you rather do a stock swap and let the people who made mcafee into such a successful enterprise with a strong product portfolio have a say in what intel does?
Re: (Score:2)
Ehmm.. it is just that 7.7 billion dollars in cash is highly unpractical. I mean how much space does it take up?? How heavy would it be? and how are they going to distribute it? Much more likely is that it is NOT cash, but just a mistake in the summary trying to convey that Intel is buying and not merging with McAfee.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)
Assuming they were classy and used $100 bills (volume: 0.69 cubic inches), it would occupy about 4,427,500 cubic feet. Anyone care to take a swing at the weight? d:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Units off by at least 1 Library of Congress ...
0.068 Cubic Inches x 77000000 pieces = 5236000 Cubic Inches = 3030 cubic feet.
Re: (Score:2)
it is just that 7.7 billion dollars in cash is highly unpractical. I mean how much space does it take up??
In the context of corporate acquisition, "cash" doesn't mean currency; it means money in a highly liquid form such as a money market account. So $7,700,000,000 takes up no more space in databases belonging to Intel, the auditor, the bank, and the IRS than any other 64-bit integer.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. Cash, in this case, is compared to a stock swap or borrowed money. It just means that they paid out of pocket with their own real money. Ridiculously large stock swaps for acquisitions are normal when a stock is overvalued... it's difficult to "sell high" without falling afoul of insider trading rules, or killing the value of your stock. Stock-based acquisitions are one way to take advantage of the periods when your stock is overvalued. Paying with real money, on the other hand, usually means
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As an illustration consider the phrase 'to cash a check'.
I've heard a plain deposit called "put the check in the bank"; it's only "cashing" when the person making the deposit asks for currency back. But then my Walmart* Discover Card's "Cashback Bonus" does come in the form of $10 checks attached to the credit card bill.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Cash" is a term that indicates that real money is changing hands (as opposed to stock). It does not imply physical currency, it can be a bank transfer or check (or in this case, probably many checks to individual stockholders). This is a very common usage in English, and I would not consider it a mistake in the summary.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You will usually see thing like company purchased for $1billion in cash and $2billion stock.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?
They're gonna add even more bloat, sucking more CPU cycles, forcing people to upgrade, and therefore buy more Intel CPUs.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I've never used McAfee from a home end user perspective, but from a corporate perspective it is a pretty solid product. The client-side agents are extremely resilient, you could have a box powered off for a year tucked away in some dark corner of the office, fire it back up, and it would check in and update just fine -- that is hugely important. Yeah, [full] system scans eat up a lot of CPU, thats why you effectively set your policies (which are pretty damn granular) to scan at certain times, disr
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I figure they'll "optimize" it for Intel (read: "detect AMD chips and add delay loops when they find them") then use it as a benchmark in the sort of magazines that pointy haired bosses read.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was really hoping they'd be buying them out to shut them down.
one can only hope, anyway.
beyond that though, is there really some benefit here or is this just to "make sure it works better on intel" or something?
I didn't imagine security research from mcafee is any better internally than intel just working with them anyway.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on, no more McAfee, and Norton will just step into their shoes.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's neat in theory, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think either would be a wise choice if you're looking for a swift anything.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.
Nah, Intel actually bought HP - McAfee just came bundled.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
But it's only a trial version. After 60 days Intel will have to pay again to keep McAfee for a year.
Re: (Score:2)
They want to optimize their support-offices...
Someone realized 90% of their calls was among these lines:"MY COMPUTER RUNS SLOW SINCE I GOT A PENTIUM!"
with the sole fix to uninstall McAfee and afterwards reinstalling the OS if the McAfee uninstal takes the guts of your PC with it.
They are going to fix McAfee.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's so bad with Intel's drivers? Even though some are outdated (especially for outdated HW) and don't have fancy GUIs doesn't mean it's broken. I've been using Intel's drivers (chipsets, grahics, storage) for 10+ years, didn't have a single problem. Unlike nVidia or ATI where uninstallation doesn't necessary mean the software is completely removed and the drivers keep crashing. And ATI drivers look even uglier than Intel's.