Mountain View, California — Relentlessly striving to safeguard its users from malware threats, search engine giant Google made a significant addition to its security lineup with its acquisition of online malware detection specialist VirusTotal, which provides a free service analyzing suspicious files and URLs and helps detect viruses, worms, Trojans and other malware, it was announced on VirusTotal’s blog Friday.
VirusTotal made the announcement in a blog post, which expressed excitement about the deal and reiterated its dedication to keeping computers from threats, while noting that the two companies have been partners for a while now.
“We are thrilled that Google, a long-time partner, has acquired VirusTotal. This is great news for you, and bad news for malware generators, because: The quality and power of our malware research tools will keep improving, most likely faster; and Google’s infrastructure will ensure that our tools are always ready, right when you need them,” the blog post reported. “This is an exciting step forward. Google has a long track record working to keep people safe online and we look forward to fighting the good fight together with them.”
However, terms of the deal, including how much Google forked out to buy the company, have not been disclosed. Also, the announcement explained that VirusTotal would continue to operate independently and would maintain partnerships with other antivirus companies and security experts intact. The platform acts as an information aggregator, which accrues the output of different antivirus engines, Website scanners, file and URL analysis tools and user contributions. The malware signatures of antivirus solutions present in VirusTotal are periodically updated as they are developed and distributed by the antivirus companies.
“Our goal is simple: to help keep you safe on the Web. And we have worked hard to ensure that the services we offer continually improve. But as a small, resource-constrained company, that can sometimes be challenging. So we are thrilled that Google, a long-time partner, has acquired VirusTotal,” the company wrote.
In addition, the company has also unfurled a number of desktop applications and tools for interacting with the service, such as a one-click file uploader, browser extensions. According to the company’s Website, there have also been a number of VirusTotal users that have developed their own applications and have made them publicly available on the Internet.
Overall, VirusTotal offers a free online tool that detects suspicious files and URLs to unmask viruses, worms, trojans, and other malware. The service employs 44 different antivirus products to check for malware that those service may have missed, including McAfee, AVG, Microsoft Malware Protection and Norton.
It also has plugins available for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
A Google spokesman declined to reveal the specifics of the deal, but informed PCMag.com in a statement Friday that security is “incredibly important” to its users. Google has invested “many millions of dollars” to keep its users safe on the web.
“VirusTotal also has a strong track record in web security, and we are delighted to be able to provide them with the infrastructure they need to ensure that their service continues to improve,” Google said.
Malaga, Spain-based VirusTotal was established in 2004. In 2007 it was selected by PC World as one of the best 100 products of the year.
However, this is not Google’s first security-related buy. The web giant has previously made other purchases to beef up its security. In 2007, it acquired GreenBorder, a security software company and Postini, an e-mail and Web security and archiving service. In 2009, the company bought reCAPTCHA, a service that makes you write out those squiggly words to prove that you are an actual person. In 2011, Google acquired Zynamics, a security analytics software company.