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Google to buy Wiz for $32B

reuters.com

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Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#731

Post by eranation »

majestik wrote: post #318

This deal isn't about security, it's about data. Google already have one of the best security teams in the industry - Project Zero [0]. They don't need Wiz's "enterprise" expertise for security. This deal is about DATA. Wiz, as a cybersecurity vendor, have full remote access to their customers cloud compute storage (EC2 EBS volumes, etc) in the name of "security scanning" - this is actually part of their unique selli…

I believe you are right in the direction, but wrong on the details. Yes they will now have tons of otherwise inaccessible data about how Wiz customer use GCP’s competitors (AWS/Azure), eg what workloads, how much they pay, how many EC2 / EKS / ECS / RDS / S3 / SageMaker are actually used and how much they pay. This is by itself highly valuable financial information, that any company would love to have about their direct competition.

I highly doubt Google or Wiz have a legal avenue that allows them to use customer data beyond fulfilling their product needs. Products like Wiz (voluntarily) go through security audits and certifications, from SOC2 type 2 to FedRamp. Also enterprise customers actually do read T&C (their legal team does at least) and having terms and conditions that allow you to train models on customer data without their consent is not going to fly under the radar for long.

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#732

Post by refulgentis »

otterley wrote: post #285
ABS wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what drives me mad is that it's not even underrated! everyone knows, everyone has been talking (and complaning) about this for something like 15 years! I personally know of 2 big GCP customers who, over the years, left GCP because of this and the impact it had in critical situations. This very feedback was given in both cases to people considerably high up on GCP's ladder and... nothing's ever changed. I'm sure plent…

Google is, at its core, an advertising company that tries to disguise itself as a technology company. When necessity calls, they will undoubtedly elect to divert resources towards their core business and away from their hobby projects (which GCP is).

I think you'd be quite surprised by how big it is inside Google. & Kurian won himself a lot of favor when Cloud figured out how to make sure it became profitable in Q2? 2023.

It was the last Google organization to have a genuine sustained hiring spree and didn't face nearly the same amount of cutbacks

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#733

Post by DeathArrow »

dinobones wrote: post #433

This makes no sense. Assume 1,000 customers each generating $2m in ARR with contracts. That’s $2 billion. Assume generous 6x ARR valuation, that’s $12 billion. Where is this $20 billion premium coming from? How could the board approve this? How is this fair to shareholders? Heck, as a minor shareholder in GOOG, I don’t find this financially responsible at all. I can’t help but think sometimes these tech acquisitions…

>Assume 1,000 customers each generating $2m in ARR with contracts. That’s $2 billion

Maybe they just need the tech. With Google behind, they can have 10,000 customers.

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#735

Post by DeathArrow »

czk wrote: post #256

> Wiz has raised a total of $1.9 billion from a combination of venture capital funds and private investors > Wiz agreed to acquire Tel Aviv-based Raftt, a cloud-based developer collaboration platform, for $50 million in December 2023. In April 2024, the company acquired cloud detection and response startup, Gem Security, for around $350 million > Wiz was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy…

>Adallom was founded in 2012 by Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik, who are former members of the Israeli Intelligence Corps’ Unit 8200 and alumni of the Talpiot program.

It's interesting that many people working in intelligence found ways to become very successful in business. I wonder what is the reason.

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#736

Post by [deleted] »

ryanSrich wrote: post #724
tptacek wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of Wiz, but would have had a hard time listing out their feature/benefit statement, because I don't work with CSPM tools. I don't think this "I have doubts about what you actually do" line is doing the work you want it to; it may be backfiring on you a bit.

CNAPPs and CSPMs are extremely common tools in cybersecurity. This is my concern. If you're in cyber and don't have knowledge of these things you're either in something insanely niche, in research of some sort, or lack critical knowledge that you should have. There's a big responsibility as a security practitioner to stay up to date on new tools and techniques. CNAPP and CSPM is not some new thing that was invented l…

[deleted]

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#737

Post by wyclif »

alephnerd wrote: post #633
powvans wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely remember this hot second you refer to. What is the HN equivalent where those conversations are happening today?

Lobste.rs for technical stuff. But most security related conversations by security SMEs aren't happening online anymore. We have specific user conferences and regional user groups now.

I don't use Lobste.rs anymore because the owner irrationally blocked the browser I'm using, and I refuse to switch to a different browser just to read Lobste.rs. The owner seems like he has some issues to say the least.

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#738

Post by VirusNewbie »

belter wrote: post #34
eitally wrote: post #7

Imho, and as a xoogler who's been in Google Cloud's ecosystem the past few years, Google Cloud's three big focus areas have been AI (this is an evolution from their historical focus on data, then also analytics), Distributed Cloud (Anthos++) and security (post the Mandiant acquisition). They'll never be able to compete on base infra, given their late entry into the game, lack of presence in certain markets, and the l…

> a way for Google to secure a beachhead in half the Fortune 100 If that is their objective, they will fail again, since this is the land of good account management. Being able to call somebody on the phone if required. Something AWS excels on, Microsoft a little bit, while Google is rumored to have humans working there, but they are rarely seen.

I previously worked for a startup that used GCP with a less than 7 figure spend each year and we had no problems talking to people at Google.

Re: Google to buy Wiz for $32B

#740

Post by Barrin92 »

zifpanachr23 wrote: post #641
detourdog wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never heard of them until they were purchased for $32 billion.

I read their website and there must be something secret they've got cooking behind the scenes cause the valuation makes zero sense to me. The whole thing reads like all the dozen or so "cloud security" plays out there. Either I'm missing something big, or their products are outrageously far ahead of all the other similar sounding products out there. I've been known to roll my eyes at a lot of these sorts of product c…

>Either I'm missing something big,

I mean, their revenue? They're apparently on track to do a billion this year, growing pretty fast, so 30 billion seems fair enough.

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