Intel Acquires McAfee For $7.68 Billion

[engine]

Intel Acquires McAfee For $7.68 Billion [bbc.co.uk]

The world's biggest computer chip maker, Intel, has agreed to buy the security technology firm, McAfee.

Intel will pay about $7.68bn (£5bn) in cash.

[gpilling]

seems like an odd tangent. Virus' attack software, and Intel makes hardware. Or am I missing something?

[walkman]

seems like an odd tangent. Virus' attack software, and Intel makes hardware. Or am I missing something?

Maybe diversification and some sort of hardware based security?

[edacsac]

Maybe diversification and some sort of hardware based security?

Hardware level protection would be a nice addition at boot up.

[joelgreen]

could be similar to antispam physical box (like IronPort?). They would provide a box which gets connected between network and your pc, and this box check traffic for viruses before viruses get to your pc. Box has its own cpu, memory, can update itself, etc. so your computer resources are not wasted. Just a speculation

[weeks]

Odd combo.

[maximillianos]

McAfee seems like a dying breed of software. Bloated and annoying. There are so many free or cheaper alternatives I think their business model is in jeopardy in the long run.

Good to see them cash out now.

Wow, and they got a whopping 45 times their annual net income. Seems like Intel over-paid in my opinion.

[walkman]

"There are so many free or cheaper alternatives I think their business model is in jeopardy in the long run."

Never in jeopardy, security will only be increased (think cell too now) so they will need to adapt to whatever happens.

Big corporations do not want all kinds of free software, most cost them a lot more in the long run.

[karter]

might it have something to do with recent malware on 3rd party manufactured parts on servers recently reported

[kaled]

The only way this could make sense is if someone at Intel has come up with some clever new CPU instructions that would allow much faster file scanning.

Such a thing is possible, however, it's still hard to see how this would turn a profit because Intel and AMD have a patent-sharing agreement so they can't use any such code to beat up AMD. And if Intel restricted access to this new instruction set, in an attempt to disadvantage other AV providers, I would certainly expect legal challenges to follow.

Personally, I reckon various executives will end up with big fat bonuses and Intel shareholders will pick up the bill for a dead duck but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Kaled.

[lammert]

Intel has always had some strange products in their portfolio. They were big in professional fax boards twenty years ago, and had a very good C compiler which didn't sell. This is just another product for their non-CPU range. But I have to agree with maximillianos that they way over-paid this deal.

[azblogtips]

Shocking news to me too

[walkman]

Intel wants to do chips about everything (cell, TV, netbooks etc) and all will need security. Simple, really.

[youfoundjake]

I usually uninstall Mcafee when I can, I hope they don't tie it to the chip. Otherwise, I'd have to switch to AMD.
OR.. maybe Intel just got tired of getting a bad rep for having slow chips, turns out Mcafee was on those machines, so they purchased the company, and are going to shut it down, thereby showing everyone its not the intel chips, but the actual bloatware...
:)

[frontpage]

McAfee is so 2000's. It is basically hostage-ware for noob computer owners who are unaware about the free alternatives available to them.

[Maurice]

as far as I know they still sell languages C and FORTRAN to "REAL" Programmers.

the FORTRAN is apparently a lot better than any open source FORTRAN.

[engine]

Intel exec Renee James discusses goals for McAfee [news.cnet.com]

How does this fit in with Intel's strategy?
James: When you think about things like power efficiency or performance or Internet connectivity as major technology areas where you have multiple investments, multiple products--security is like that. Security is applicable to our products in the data center, laptops, desktops, and any Atom-based devices--whether they're embedded, TVs, automotive, or phones and tablets. Security is a major purchase criteria and a concern. So, it spreads across the whole product line.

[SEOPTI]

McAfee is some sort of parasite, once on your machine you can't get rid of.

[graeme_p]

as far as I know they still sell languages C and FORTRAN to "REAL" Programmers.

Provided the REAL programmers are willing to compile their software only for x86, x86-64 and IA-64, and optimised only for Intel.

In the REAL world, lots of stuff needs to be able to run on multiple platforms (ARM - including Intel's own StrongARM, MIPS, POWER, whatever IBM call their mainframes these days, SPARC, etc.).