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Buy, Don’t Build

Buy, Don’t Build — An ex-Symantec employee writes to tell us about how many programs Symantec has developed as opposed to acquiring:

As a matter of fact, it’s pretty easy to figure out. Every single Symantec product, even the name of the company, was acquired from somewhere else. The company we now know as Symantec started life as "C & E Software;" the "E" was for Eubanks, I don’t know who "C" was. They bought this little company called Symantec and took on the name as well as the product (which was Q&A).

Every product that Symantec has ever shipped has either been the result of an acquisition, or has been a refinement to an acquired product. Symantec has never shipped a product developed in house from scratch. (There have been some notable failures, such as Q&A for the Macintosh and Bedrock, though. Make of that what you will.)

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