Today’s topics include shareholder opposition to a rumored Dell and VMware reverse merger and Google Play Protect effectively improving Android security.
Dell CEO Michael Dell and advisers are considering a reverse merger with VMware that could lead to taking Dell public again, according to recent reports. Dell is the majority owner of VMware, holding about 82 percent of the stock.
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger declined to discuss the speculation.
Josh Resnick, manager member of Jericho Capital Asset Management, a large VMware investor, claims the reverse merger would destroy VMware shareholder value, saying, “[VMware] gains nothing by saddling the Company’s faster growth, net cash, highly strategic software business with the dead weight of Dell’s slower growth, heavily debt-laden, legacy hardware-dependent entity.”
VMware this month reported strong quarterly financial numbers, including a 14 percent jump in revenue—to $2.31 billion—over the same period last year.
Google on March 15 released its fourth annual report on security improvements to its Android mobile operating system. The report credits Google’s Play Protect suite of Android security services with playing a big role in bolstering the security of its operating system last year.
Play Protect, which was introduced last May, keeps Android users safe from potentially harmful applications, or PHAs, on their devices and in the Google Play mobile app store. The technology automatically scans Android devices daily and removes any PHAs.
Dave Kleidermacher, vice president of security for Android, Play and ChromeOS, said such scans helped Google remove 39 million PHAs from user devices last year, as well as scan 65 percent more apps in its Play store for malware compared with 2016.