Google Makes Second Security Acquisition With Purchase Of Postini

from the g-secure dept

Mon, Jul 9th 2007 8:06am — Joseph Weisenthal

The incumbent security vendors thought they were experiencing their worst nightmare when Microsoft made moves to expand its presence in their market. Their troubles look set to compound, as Google is now aggressively ratcheting up its security-related business. In May, Google announced the acquisition of GreenBorder Technologies, a maker of anti-virus and anti-spyware technology. Today, the company announced that it would acquire Postini, in the hopes of adding a deeper layer of security to its burgeoning Google Apps business. Seeing as security concerns have always been one of the reasons that businesses have cited for not embracing on-demand software, the move makes a lot of sense for Google. Its own applications notwithstanding, Google's entry into this space is logical. No company has better knowledge of what's on the internet than Google, and as more and more security threats are web-borne, Google's position makes it a natural player in this market. If Google continues to expand in this area, it'll be interesting to see whether its competitors wave the antitrust stick at it. If companies like Symantec and others feel that Microsoft is making it hard for third parties to secure its software, it's going to be even harder for a third party wishing to secure Google's online apps.

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6 Comments

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Tom, 9 Jul 2007 @ 8:27am

Great! J/K, this is a bad think. I have over 1000 Postini users in my org and can't wait to see the spam get past Postini in a way it never has. Postini is a great service and very effective but Google makes money by advertising. Spam = adds, I'll bet my bottom dollar the amount of spam coming is increases because of this. Go away Google don't mess up a good thing.
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Paul`, 9 Jul 2007 @ 8:58am

Spam isnt ads
spam is unsolicited emails.

Google offer text adds based on whats on the site you're looking at, plus its not like its hard to block them. I'd hardly call google ads spam.
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Scott, 9 Jul 2007 @ 9:03am

Google+Security=HOLY COW!
So,
Imagine if you were the largest, most expert search engine...yeah, I know, hard to imagine, but try! Now, you index all of the bad sites, and make security signatures based on your super-dooper indexing. That would just be BADASS! You would be way ahead of the curve on new exploits and viruses. You could make a killing, or in Google's case, another killing!
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JS Beckerist, 9 Jul 2007 @ 9:45am

I disagree, but I understand
Ads do not equal spam. I've used Gmail now for a few years, and the text ads on the side are non-intrusive, and as they are merely text use minimal bandwidth. They also have an extremely effective spam filter, in fact, I use 2 gmail accounts: 1 is a catch-all and forward (and therefore my spam-blocker) and the second account gets MAYBE 1 or 2 spam a day (as that email was released to the wild mistakenly ONCE.)

My point is, ads do not equal spam, and I think Google has the potential to REALLY give this application a boost!
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anony cow, 9 Jul 2007 @ 3:27pm

there are text ads alongside gmail? what browser are you using? IE4?
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Tom, 9 Jul 2007 @ 3:53pm

I was more thinking down the lines that google will be able to determine what adds (spam) get flagged and what adds don't. I don't like the idea of a search engine (some of its revenue driven by ads) has control of what is considered spam. If they leave it as it is great. If they start to make exceptions, well that could be a bad thing. Kind of far fetched but that’s how I think.
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