- published: 06 May 2014
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Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers, best known for its Norton brand. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.
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 the word processor component within Q&A).
In 1984 it became clear that the advanced natural language and database system that Symantec had developed could not be ported from DEC minicomputers to the PC. This left Symantec without a product, but with expertise in natural language database query systems and technology. As a result, later in 1984 Symantec was acquired by another, smaller software startup company, C&E Software, founded by Denis Coleman and Gordon Eubanks and headed by Eubanks. C&E Software was in the process of developing an integrated file management and word processing program.