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For more than $7.6 billion.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/technology/20chip.html
For those of you who don't know, Intel is a chip-making company primarily making processors while McAfee is a security software company making antivirus software. It probably ships with a lot of computers and FWIW, McAfee antivirus sucks.
SAN FRANCISCO — Hoping to accelerate its move into smartphones and consumer electronics, the chip maker Intel has turned to security software and services as a way to separate its products from those of its rivals.
On Thursday, Intel paid $7.68 billion to acquire McAfee, one of the leading sellers of antivirus and other computer security software. The companies, both based in Santa Clara, Calif., plan to create tight links between Intel’s chips and McAfee’s security technology.
Analysts doubted that McAfee’s business would have much near-term impact on Intel’s bottom line.
Intel’s fortunes are tied to PCs and the computer servers that go into data centers. As such, Intel, with revenue of $35.1 billion in 2009, goes through boom-and-bust cycles as demand waxes and wanes. McAfee, with revenue of $1.93 billion last year, sells a great deal of software on a subscription basis, which can smooth out financial results from quarter to quarter and year to year.
“There are no immediate synergies that I can see,” said Stacy A. Rasgon, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “It is a strategic deal, and it is a pretty rich price for a strategic buy.” Supposedly they did this to "accelerate its move into smartphones and consumer electronics". Your thoughts on this?
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mcafee sucks balls,,
no one i know buys it. even my friend's parents companies dont use it. and they can get it for dirt cheap for their businesses but they were like lol.. fuck that.
biggest waste of 7.6billion
at least when google bought youtube, some people were like.. "i get it.."
with this transaction, i dont get it =\ but then again, im just a random dude from canada so i guess it doesnt matter if i get it or not lol
but i wish i had that money instead.. sighhhh
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$7.6billion spent on a company which uses fear to sell useless, heavy software.
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I use McAfee
I don't like it.
Damn dell and their endorsements -_-;
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McAfee hasn't been relevant since windows 98.
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it doesnt matter if it sucks, it has name recognition. Average computer user doesnt know.
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Not the best choice by Intel... But who knows, maybe they have some ridiculous, godly plan up their sleeves?
However with McAfee in the mix, I can't see that being the case.
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Exactly.
Everyones heard of mcafee and it sounds freaking awesome. must be good!
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On August 20 2010 20:45 jjun212 wrote: mcafee sucks balls,,
no one i know buys it. even my friend's parents companies dont use it. and they can get it for dirt cheap for their businesses but they were like lol.. fuck that.
biggest waste of 7.6billion
at least when google bought youtube, some people were like.. "i get it.."
with this transaction, i dont get it =\ but then again, im just a random dude from canada so i guess it doesnt matter if i get it or not lol
but i wish i had that money instead.. sighhhh
Lol. I'm sure that the guy who made that decision has no idea about any other antivirus and just googled and picked the first one that popped up.
Are you serious? McAffee is a well known brand used by many top-tier companies. Also, if you were to actually check on the stats of "how good antiviruses are" you'll see that it went up-and-down in the past years.
Quite recently (this year, or late last year, I believe), they were in the top 5 with their new engine, and they've almost always had decent detection rates. So yeah, I'd think that the people who actually approved this purchase might know JUST A LITTLE BIT more than you do about what they're doing.
On August 20 2010 21:42 CharlieMurphy wrote: it doesnt matter if it sucks, it has name recognition. Average computer user doesnt know.
This is also true. Yes, McAffee is heavy, but a lot of people use it because it comes free for 6 months with their laptops. If they like it and keep going, good for them.
Besides, there are numbers about the kind of money McAffee rakes in yearly in the article above. That should tell you something.
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On August 20 2010 21:48 CubEdIn wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2010 20:45 jjun212 wrote: mcafee sucks balls,,
no one i know buys it. even my friend's parents companies dont use it. and they can get it for dirt cheap for their businesses but they were like lol.. fuck that.
biggest waste of 7.6billion
at least when google bought youtube, some people were like.. "i get it.."
with this transaction, i dont get it =\ but then again, im just a random dude from canada so i guess it doesnt matter if i get it or not lol
but i wish i had that money instead.. sighhhh Are you serious? McAffee is a well known brand used by many top-tier companies. Also, if you were to actually check on the stats of "how good antiviruses are" you'll see that it went up-and-down in the past years. Quite recently (this year, or late last year, I believe), they were in the top 5 with their new engine, and they've almost always had decent detection rates. So yeah, I'd think that the people who actually approved this purchase might know JUST A LITTLE BIT more than you do about what they're doing.
Actually McAfee is consistently inferior to a lot of their competitors even when it comes to detection, both retrospective and proactive. Look it up on av-comparatives.org. ESET, Bitdefender, Norton, Avira, and Kaspersky to name a few are all far superior in terms of detection, false positives, and for the most post resource usage.
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On August 20 2010 21:58 writer22816 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2010 21:48 CubEdIn wrote:On August 20 2010 20:45 jjun212 wrote: mcafee sucks balls,,
no one i know buys it. even my friend's parents companies dont use it. and they can get it for dirt cheap for their businesses but they were like lol.. fuck that.
biggest waste of 7.6billion
at least when google bought youtube, some people were like.. "i get it.."
with this transaction, i dont get it =\ but then again, im just a random dude from canada so i guess it doesnt matter if i get it or not lol
but i wish i had that money instead.. sighhhh Are you serious? McAffee is a well known brand used by many top-tier companies. Also, if you were to actually check on the stats of "how good antiviruses are" you'll see that it went up-and-down in the past years. Quite recently (this year, or late last year, I believe), they were in the top 5 with their new engine, and they've almost always had decent detection rates. So yeah, I'd think that the people who actually approved this purchase might know JUST A LITTLE BIT more than you do about what they're doing. Actually McAfee is consistently inferior to a lot of their competitors even when it comes to detection, both retrospective and proactive. Look it up on av-comparatives.org. ESET, Bitdefender, Norton, Avira, and Kaspersky to name a few are all far superior in terms of detection, false positives, and for the most post resource usage.
If by far superior you mean "slightly superior" then yes, you're right. Don't get me wrong, I don't support McAfee as being the best anti-virus out there. But it has constantly been in the top 10 list of anti-virus software vendors, often surpassing Norton in detection charts. And consider that Symantec is a much, much larger company than McAfee (about 3-4 times larger in revenues). Those are all good brands, but saying that McAfee is CRAP and that it's been irrelevant since W98 is clearly ignorant. Most of the people who posted here are speaking from the point of view of the average consumer who used McAfee for a couple of months at most. That has absolutely zero relevance in this case. I'm pretty sure Intel knows what they're doing. Of course I'm not expecting a big blow to the competition with the help of the Uber-McAfee sidekick, but I'm also sure that there were a ton of well thought-out reasons why this decision has been made.
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For those of you who don't get why Intel would buy McAfee, a growing trend recently is including a lot of the security checks that anti-virus software makes directly on the chip. This provides a couple of benefits which are probably immediately obvious, such as being far more secure (hardware security > software security), as well as improved performance. This has extreme relevance in mobile devices.
There have been lots of architecture studies in this area in recent years (going hand in hand with timing speculation, which is a different topic entirely), and it makes sense that Intel is ready to start biting by purchasing one of the biggest names in computer security today.
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Used McAfee for two years and it works better than half the free crap you find out there imo.
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McAfee isn't any good I have Kapersky but I'm not sure if I want to install it personally i dont get viruses. just be smart and dont download things.
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Intel CEO: "We need antivirus, can someone buy me McAfee?" Few hours later: "Done." "Great, which version?" "Version ... ?"
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I haven't used antivirus ever, and it's been over ten years... no problems yet.
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Canada7170 Posts
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
McAfee is garbage.
Back in April they released an update that quarantined SVCHOST.exe on Windows XP machines, rendering them unusable until fixed manually. Why the hell would you release an update without testing it at least once on an XP machine?
http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=8656
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