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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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I was going to post about how bad McAfee was but I don't think there's a need...
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On August 20 2010 21:42 CharlieMurphy wrote:
it doesnt matter if it sucks, it has name recognition. Average computer user doesnt know.
And that's who they sell 90% of their product to.
Let's say you're 70 years old, computers might as well be Brain Surgery, you only use it to Email and use google to search up recipes.
Easy marketing is normally along the lines of: "People will go on your computer, steal your Social Security number, and your credit card number and then you will get viruses which will ruin your computer!" Which isn't true, if you're careful, but being very uneducated on computers, they feel the money spent is well worth it, even though you can pick up way better protection for free (Spybot and Malware bytes both come to mind)
I think I've also heard rumors of McAfee creating their own Viruses so they can advertise additional safety to users who might not be protected.
The same thing applys to a few other 'Anti-Virus' programs, I'm hoping Intel, who is known for quality, can take this HUGE name in virus protection and turn it into something worth paying for.
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Intel has been trying to poke out of their computer market. I remember that Intel developed an x86 platform for mobile phones called Mooretown or something that should compete with the ARM offerings in the market
Can't see how McAfee helps that though.
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17082 Posts
This is absolutely baffling. Intel obviously has the capital to acquire decently sized companies, and they definitely have the luxury of being able to "shop around" for acquisitions. I have no clue why they'd spend that much money on a marginally important anti-virus software developer.
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United States4053 Posts
I really don't know why Intel, a company that makes very good hardware but very mediocre software, would buy McAfee, a company that makes only mediocre software. On top of that, McAfee's mediocre software isn't incredibly necessary on portable devices (and will probably be a pain on them instead). I can only suspect that Intel has gone nuts or they have a brilliant master plan.
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Really seems like a very bad business move, I hope someone is getting fired over this, McAfee is probably the worse anti-virus I've ever used, and I've spent alot of time doing tech support fixing their shit.
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They are probably trying to integrate their AV into their hardware.
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United States10328 Posts
seems like a strange acquisition...
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The price they paid is what really makes no sense. I can understand a big tech company finding out McAfee is for sale and deciding to buy it if they got a good deal. It is still a pretty strong brand name and maybe you could have them on top of the AV charts with a couple key hires and restructures or something. But to pay 60% OVER current value... wtf?
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yea and you all know why you all hate mcafee. all your HP, Dell, Compaq, etc comes preinstalled with Mcafee and at some point you got annoyed by that notification bar.
It may not be the preferred protection tools by people who knows of other substitutes, but they probably get tons of market share directly thru manufacturer deals.
stock jumped 50%+ damn it
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Hello Intel,
Please don't jack prices higher to cover the cost of this seemingly silly transaction. There are many other anti-virus companies out there that are better. McAfee simply alerts people they have a virus without having the ability to get rid of it. Unless you're trying to get those silly mainstreamer's, please improve the product or leave it out of your better products.
Thank you,
-Whyzguy
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lol so many retards using that mcafee
avast baby!
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Ugh, I hate McAfee. My old computer came pre-installed with it and it was extremely resource heavy. Not to mention it bugged me to renew so much, I just uninstalled it and installed AVG.
I was 2 months away from buying a new computer when it expired and it was so annoying I didn't last 2 months before I had to uninstall it. There was no way of getting rid of the constant renewal pop-ups without uninstalling.
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On August 20 2010 23:31 Blixy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2010 21:42 CharlieMurphy wrote:
it doesnt matter if it sucks, it has name recognition. Average computer user doesnt know. And that's who they sell 90% of their product to. Let's say you're 70 years old, computers might as well be Brain Surgery, you only use it to Email and use google to search up recipes. Easy marketing is normally along the lines of: "People will go on your computer, steal your Social Security number, and your credit card number and then you will get viruses which will ruin your computer!" Which isn't true, if you're careful, but being very uneducated on computers, they feel the money spent is well worth it, even though you can pick up way better protection for free (Spybot and Malware bytes both come to mind) I think I've also heard rumors of McAfee creating their own Viruses so they can advertise additional safety to users who might not be protected. The same thing applys to a few other 'Anti-Virus' programs, I'm hoping Intel, who is known for quality, can take this HUGE name in virus protection and turn it into something worth paying for.
As they say, "how do two programmers make money?" One writes viruses, the other, anti-viruses.
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lol, antiviruses still have value?, so many ignorant people in this world!
I use linux on amd, so this is sooo far away...
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People who hate McAfee are people who had a preinstalled trial version and didn't like it because of the constant notices asking you to buy it. My message to those people is It's a free trial of course they will ask you to buy it... I have the full version and have had no problems with it for three years. But seriously, while it may run heavy McAfee is still decent compared to a lot of other crap out there.
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United States20666 Posts
Morgan Stanley > Goldman Sachs on this one. 48$/share is way too high IMO.
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My computer came with Norton Anti Virus, didn't like it. So I'm just using windows defender.
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I'm about to switch back to Windows from Apple... ugh I hate the prospect of having to deal with viruses again.
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but at least I'll be able to get on vent!
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Norton antivirus 360 is pretty good, i dont really like to buy anti virus but I think it was worth it.
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Honestly, Microsoft Security Essentials does a good enough job. And it's not going to act like a fucking virus itself, unlike Norton and McAfee.
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On August 21 2010 05:12 sputnik.theory wrote:
I'm about to switch back to Windows from Apple... ugh I hate the prospect of having to deal with viruses again.
You don't have to deal with them lol, all you need to do is to act smart and use common sense and you will almost never get a virus.
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Would you like to scan this download for copyright infringement?
1. Yes
2. Yes
Fuck this, I'm going to uninstall it.
Cannot uninstall hardware
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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EPT
