| Name | Symantec Corporation | | Founded | Sunnyvale, California, U.S. (1982|3|1) | | Location City | 350 Ellis Street,Mountain View, California | | Location Country | U.S. | | Key people | John W. Thompson, Chairman Enrique T. Salem, CEO James Beer, CFO Mark Bregman, CTO David Thompson, CIO Greg Hughes, CSO | | Industry | Computer software Security software | | Revenue | USD 6.2 billion (2009), 5% from 2008 | | Operating income | USD(2009) {{decrease}} 1080% from 2008 | | Number of employees | 18,500 (2010) | | Home page | Symantec.com |
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Symantec Corporation (SYMC) is the largest maker of personal computer security software. Founded in 1982 by Gary Hendrix with a National Science Foundation grant, Symantec was originally focused on artificial intelligence-related projects, including a database program. Hendrix hired several Stanford University natural language processing researchers as the company's first employees,
among them Barry Greenstein (professional poker player and developer of Q&A).
In 1984 Symantec was acquired by another, even smaller computer software startup company, C&E Software, founded by Denis Coleman and Gordon Eubanks and headed by Eubanks. The merged company retained the name Symantec, and Eubanks became its chief executive officer. Its first product, Q&A, was released in 1985. Q&A provided database management and bundled a word processor. In August 1990, Symantec purchased Peter Norton Computing, a developer of various applications for DOS. Symantec's consumer antivirus and data management utilities are still marketed under Peter Norton's name. |