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McAfee Buys SiteAdvisor For Rumored $75 Million
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-04-06
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While terms were not disclosed for the deal, McAfee may have paid $75 million to pick up the website safety service SiteAdvisor.
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SiteAdvisor works with Internet Explorer and Firefox and provides various ratings and safety warning services. The product has been available as a free download, and the company expects to keep the current features available for existing and new users.
Formed in April 2005, SiteAdvisor uses a system of automated testers that continually browse sites, download files, and enter information on sign-up forms. A user community also provides feedback on sites rated by the service.
Ideally, SiteAdvisor alerts users to potentially problematic websites before visiting them from a search engine results page. The software displays safety ratings next to each search result. When browsing a site, SiteAdvisor's plugin shows green, yellow, or red to bring attention to the possible issues discovered by SiteAdvisor.
Once integrated with McAfee, the various consumer level products offered by the company such as antivirus should include SiteAdvisor, which has been developing premium level services along with its current features.
McAfee also sells various business-targeted products that focus on enterprise security protection with centralized management. Though not mentioned in the statement from McAfee about the acquisition, the thousands of corporate users of its products should be considered potential uses of SiteAdvisor.
One way McAfee could use its new purchase in the business environment would be as part of the reporting capabilities in its ePolicy Orchestrator. Users who visit websites that SiteAdvisor has rated red could find themselves part of some easily generated report about that behavior.
Though terms of the deal were not disclosed, as is generally the custom when a company purchases one that is privately held, someone may have leaked the purchase price to the tech rumor website, Valleywag. They reported a tip they received citing a purchase price for the year-old company at $75 million.
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Tags: McAfee, SiteAdvisor
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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