Intel considered acquiring either Symantec or McAfee for years before it announced last week that it would buy the latter, former Intel senior vice president Pat Gelsinger said on Thursday. Gelsinger, now president and chief operating officer of Information Infrastructure Products at EMC, said he was surprised by the timing of the McAfee deal but not by its logic. "We had looked at security and security deals for a long time ... with the basic thesis of securing the base platform," Gelsinger told reporters after a presentation in San Francisco on Thursday. Gelsinger joined EMC about a year ago after 30 years at Intel, where he rose to senior vice president and co-general manager of the company's Digital Enterprise group.

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