Lost all remaining respect for Intel with this bone-headed move. McAfee and Intel headquarters are within walking distance of each other. Perhaps the CEOs met for a few drinks at Birks and decided to do this. Make absolutely no sense at all.
Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
71–80 of 130 posts
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#72Why would they do this? It seemed obvious to me than in 5-10 years Antivirus software would be obsolete and unnecessary. I hear people every day recommending Windows 7 users get Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else. And personally I run Ubuntu, so I haven't thought about antivirus software in years... This seems like a very odd decision to me. Intel, a world leader in processor design, does not need to get…
I work at a small antivirus company. I'd be interested in knowing how helping people whose computers are infected get them uninfected is a "sleazy business".
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#73I think this is indicative of a real risk we will see with large corporations right now. Many of these large cap companies have huge cash hordes and are being pressured to do something with it. The risk is that the cash will be used stupidly to do poor deals and I think the market is indicating that this McAfee deal is a bad one. Their shareholders would have probably been better suited with a special $7B dividend in…
Not necessarily - I think it has the potential to be a very good move for Intel.
I thought about my last post more, and I can think of a few applications where it could give Intel some huge advantages.
Something that came to mind: We all agree that AV software eats CPU cycles. What's to say Intel can't just start putting custom hardware that is designed solely to offload signature checking onto a separate chip? With the increasing sizes of detection databases (anomalies, threats, etc), eventually it will get to a point where the typical CPU cannot feasibly cross-reference known threats AND perform proactive checking in a fast enough environment to make it useful.
Not to mention network detection via the same means. Pretty soon you will be seeing motherboards or at least CPUs that have other dedicated hardware to checking signature sets on an extremely fast basis versus having to try and mix other, non-security-related cycles with what I'll call "user" cycles.
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#74Why would they do this? It seemed obvious to me than in 5-10 years Antivirus software would be obsolete and unnecessary. I hear people every day recommending Windows 7 users get Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else. And personally I run Ubuntu, so I haven't thought about antivirus software in years... This seems like a very odd decision to me. Intel, a world leader in processor design, does not need to get…
Maybe McAfee has a patent portfolio that Intel fancies some use for?
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#75Good news for AMD and ARM that Intel is getting diluted with irrelevant stuff!
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#76Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
In April they issued an update that accidentally targeted legitimate Windows system files, causing the updated boxes to bluescreen. Astounding enterprise-level incompetence.
From what I've heard, Intel HQ was hit by this as well.
maybe they weighed their options, and found that buying the company straight for 7 billion is cheaper than suffering through more downtime caused by McAfee software.
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#78Why would they do this? It seemed obvious to me than in 5-10 years Antivirus software would be obsolete and unnecessary. I hear people every day recommending Windows 7 users get Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else. And personally I run Ubuntu, so I haven't thought about antivirus software in years... This seems like a very odd decision to me. Intel, a world leader in processor design, does not need to get…
I'm definitely biased as a MS employee, but I can't underscore enough MSE as an Antivirus solution - it's the least annoying AV on the market and has the least perf impact on your system. Literally, you install it and it only bothers you when it absolutely has to.
100% agreed. I don't work for MS but I honestly didn't run av software at all until MSE. It's the Google Chrome of AV software.
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#79I think this is indicative of a real risk we will see with large corporations right now. Many of these large cap companies have huge cash hordes and are being pressured to do something with it. The risk is that the cash will be used stupidly to do poor deals and I think the market is indicating that this McAfee deal is a bad one. Their shareholders would have probably been better suited with a special $7B dividend in…
Not necessarily - I think it has the potential to be a very good move for Intel. I thought about my last post more, and I can think of a few applications where it could give Intel some huge advantages. Something that came to mind: We all agree that AV software eats CPU cycles. What's to say Intel can't just start putting custom hardware that is designed solely to offload signature checking onto a separate chip? With…
No thank you! AV software is not security, it's a stopgap measure for when you have to "do something" but are too lazy to implement real security measures. And McAfee is one of the lowest quality AV vendors out there (remember when they pushed out a definition update that made XP instances unbootable? that costs a lot of people a lot of headache, and millions of dollars).
Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're talking about $7.7 billion . I'm not sure it's quite as rosy a picture as you paint. I'm not that familiar with McAfee's annual profits, but even if they make $500 million a year, we can value the talent they cherry-pick at an absurdly high value of $1 billion, and it would still take Intel well over 10 years to recoup the investment, assuming stable revenue streams.
A simplified perpetuity of $175m @ 6% would have a PV of ~= 3b. I'm having trouble seeing how they'd ever break even based on profits alone. I just can't imagine what kind of integration with existing products they think will add another 4.7b.
6% seems a little high given the current climate, no? Take that down to 3% and you're in the neighborhood of the deal price.
Still not sure if I agree with the deal, and it does seem driven by a bunch of cash burning a hole in Intel's pocket.