Sunbelt Personal Firewall Software End-of-Life

Precisely what I was going to ask. What's the reason to kill CC? In the thread you mention, I even suggested GFI could partner with some search engine, such as Bing, but I forgot they already had a partnership with Google. Whenever the user entered a wrong domain, he/she would end up in a Google page.

That ought to give revenue, correct? I mean, I doubt Sunbelt/GFI partnered with Google for free.

 

ClearCloud never got out of beta. I didn't charge anybody anything for it, and I never put a toolbar or other garbage (like junk search engine redirects) to monetize it. It was a grand experiment for my tinkering mind, and after expending a rather large bucket of cash into it, it was clear it was not going to be a money-maker. So I'm going to be shuttering the service and see if I can use the infrastructure we built (which, IMHO, is pretty cool) to do something else interesting.

It is totally natural to think that because GFI bought Sunbelt, they are de-investing in the business (something that certain other companies are infamous for). But GFI is being a great partner. They have given me an incredibly generous R&D budget, and they put up with my wild ideas. You'll see something in a few weeks a few of us here have been working on that I think is genuinely cool and a game changer. It will be free.


Alex Eckelberry
General Manager, GFI Security
alexe(at) gfi.com

 

Thanks Alex for you explanation and get VIPRE in more tests!

TH

 

Sorry, but that's not true. I used CC since it came out, and everytime I wrote an incorrect domain at the address bar (NXDOMAIN), I'd be taken to a Google page.

Are you saying this is false?

I'm pretty sure other CC users can say the same. I didn't imagine things.

 

The one hand taketh:

and the other hand giveth:

Anyone see the irony?

 

Fair point. We put redirects to Google in nxdomains, which frankly you would get with Chrome or the Google Toolbar, and as a Google user myself, I saw as a rather nice feature. Redirects didn't go to Yahoo or Ask or Bing or anyone else. However, that Google redirect relationship generated me a grand total of about $300 per month in revenue, and that was with thousands of users. I suppose that's the broader point. I could have made a lot more money with a different search engine provider, and by loading up on lots of ads. Maybe I should have and in the process saved ClearCloud (maybe), but the whole project would have been uninteresting to me at that point.

 

Alas, that is the nature of the beast. Businesses make products, sometimes they are commercially successful, sometimes they aren't. I suppose the bigger worry would be when a business stopped even trying to innovate.

 

Alex,

Are there any future plans for developing the GFI SandBox for a "home user"?


Thanks.

 

What's NEXT on their List?

 

Farewell SPF, farewell

 

No, not at this point. We have the public sandbox available here:

http://www.sunbeltsecurity.com/sandbox/


Alex

 

Just a guess... Vipre Mobile for the Android platform.

 

My guess uses two cans, a string, and a pair of scissors.

SourMilk out

 

Hi Sir Alex,

Hope everything's well.

Just a question, it's been approximately four weeks since the last update on this thread, would you have any news regarding the free "gaming changing" product that was discussed here earlier?

Cheers,
K