Intel bought McAfee for $7bn, wants to sell it for $3bn

[mikeymikec]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-software-creator-sues-for-right-to-use-name

I'm wondering how many thousands of people around the world could have told Intel at the time that buying McAfee would be an incredibly stupid idea.

 

[sandorski]

IIRC, many did.

 

[pyonir]

You mean a product that tries to trick and force me to install it, isn't profitable? lol.

 

[Puffnstuff]

With a name like McAfee you'd think that they were part of the McDonald's family. Couldn't you just picture the Hamburgrlar seizing your pc for a ransom of a happy meal or something?

 

[MongGrel]

I was never a McAfee fan myself.

My two cents.

 

[ronbo613]

Pretty shrewd business deal

 

[FeuerFrei]

Funny, last month I got a new Dell (at work). Naturally it had McAfee pre-installed. Now, I saw McAfee bundled before I hit the "BUY" button on Dell's website, so I knew it was included, but there was no option to reject it. When I turned on the Dell for the first time and went through the setup process, I found the McAfee EULA appended to the Dell EULA, and I could only accept/reject them as a unit.
So as days went by and McAfee Live began harassing me about registering or something similar, I got pissed and uninstalled it. I didn't know what McAfee Live was but I assumed it was antivirus. As part of the software removal it solicited a reason for the uninstall, providing a comment field for me to fill out.
I excoriated McAfee for piggybacking their EULA on Dell's AND giving me no option to reject the software at any point in the purchase process. I labelled McAfee a "dead brand walking."
And here, a couple weeks later, we have this news.

 

[Ketchup]

Microsoft had to have made it hard for people to want to pay for software like this. One might say "took them long enough", but that's water under the bridge. Makes McAfee look like a genius - both by selling for such a huge profit, and moving away from an indistry that some might say has passed its day in the sun (I say that referring computers with 8, 10, and Android machines that aren't nearly as much of a target).

 

[corkyg]

Good points - I remember when McAfee was the cat's meow circa late 80s when Windows was at 2 going on 3 and we still had to create config.sys.

 

[PliotronX]

The biggest bummer of the acquisition was the killing of the cloud based email firewall which looked like it was actually a better product than Symantec messagelabs. Intel makes great hardware but they really should stay out of software.

 

[smakme7757]

It's no given that the $7b buyout from Intel was a bad deal. As far as we know they siphoned out the best parts and are selling the rest for $3b. I mean why not? It's not like Intel have a use for all the software Mcafee as a firm created. Most likely they only needed portion and a chunk of security engineers. They might as well sell off the rest. That is my take on this anyway.

 

[mikeymikec]

It's no given that the $7b buyout from Intel was a bad deal. As far as we know they siphoned out the best parts and are selling the rest for $3b. I mean why not? It's not like Intel have a use for all the software Mcafee as a firm created. Most likely they only needed portion and a chunk of security engineers. They might as well sell off the rest. That is my take on this anyway.

Interesting theory, but I'm not aware of anything new that Intel is producing that could theoretically have come from this purchase. If McAfee had come up with some innovative 'no execute on steroids' type tech that is best implemented in hardware, that might have legitimately gained Intel's interest; however I can't think of anything technically innovative that McAfee has done full stop.

MS buying McAfee would have made a bit more sense, but still not much.

 

[smakme7757]

It does seem that way, but at the same time I have a feeling that they have pocketed something from the deal that has been worth the expense. Intel invest heavily in R&D so there might be something in the pipeline we won't see for a while.

But taking it at face value it does seem like a big waste of $4b for very little gain. And it might just be that clear cut...

 

[zephyrprime]

It does seem that way, but at the same time I have a feeling that they have pocketed something from the deal that has been worth the expense. Intel invest heavily in R&D so there might be something in the pipeline we won't see for a while.

But taking it at face value it does seem like a big waste of $4b for very little gain. And it might just be that clear cut...

Dude many business analysts have already gone through this and have shown that it was just a big waste of money. Intel wanted to expand its business into the software world and they thought they could offer security software to their corporate customers. However, Intel totally failed to sell any additional software and Mcafee's revenues have been flat since the acquisition and their profitability has been cut in half. Also, intel lacks a last mile sales force so how could they sell any enterprise software anyway? The exec in charge of the software group at intel was let go last year.

Many people don't know this but most big business purchases/mergers are failures (excluding mergers between two companies that do the exact same thing).

 

[ClockHound]

Interesting theory, but I'm not aware of anything new that Intel is producing that could theoretically have come from this purchase. If McAfee had come up with some innovative 'no execute on steroids' type tech that is best implemented in hardware, that might have legitimately gained Intel's interest; however I can't think of anything technically innovative that McAfee has done full stop.

MS buying McAfee would have made a bit more sense, but still not much.

And now they can. M$Afee 365.

 

[Scooby Doo]

And now they can. M$Afee 365.

Just imagine.... it's part of the next Win 10 updates