Editing Gen Digital (section)

===1990 to 1999===
In May 1990, Symantec announced its intent to merge with and acquire [[Peter Norton Computing]], a developer of various utilities for DOS. Turner was appointed as product group manager for the Norton business, and made responsible for the merger, with P&L responsibility. Ted Schlein was made product group manager for the Q&A business.

The Peter Norton group merger logistical effort began immediately while the companies sought approval for the merger, and in August 1990, Symantec concluded the purchase—by this time the combination of the companies was already complete. Symantec's consumer antivirus and data management utilities are still marketed under the [[Norton (Symantec)|Norton]] name. At the time of the merger, Symantec had built upon its Turner Hall Publishing presence in the utility market, by introducing Symantec Antivirus for the Macintosh (SAM), and Symantec Utilities for the Macintosh (SUM). These two products were already market leaders on the Mac, and this success made the Norton merger more strategic. Symantec had already begun the development of a DOS-based antivirus program one year before the merger with Norton. The management team had decided to enter the antivirus market in part because it was felt that the antivirus market entailed a great deal of ongoing work to stay ahead of new viruses. The team felt that Microsoft would be unlikely to find this effort attractive, which would lengthen the viability of the market for Symantec. Turner decided to use the Norton name for obvious reasons, on what became the ''Norton Antivirus'', which Turner and the Norton team launched in 1991. At the time of the merger, Norton revenues were approximately 20 to 25% of the combined entity. By 1993, while being led by Turner, Norton product group revenues had grown to approximately 82% of Symantec's total.

At one time Symantec was also known for its development tools, particularly the THINK [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], [[THINK C]], Symantec [[C++]], Enterprise Developer and [[Visual Cafe]] packages that were popular on the [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]] and [[IBM PC compatible]] platforms. These product lines resulted from acquisitions made by the company in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These businesses and the Living Videotext acquisition were consistently unprofitable for Symantec, and these losses diverted expenditures away from both the Q&A for Windows and the TimeLine for Windows development efforts during the critical period from 1988 through 1992. Symantec exited this business in the late-1990s as competitors such as [[Metrowerks]], [[Microsoft]] and [[Borland]] gained significant market share.

In 1996, Symantec Corporation was accused of misleading financial statements in violation of [[Generally accepted accounting principles|GAAP]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Class+action+suit+filed+against+Symantec+Corporation+and+its+officers...-a018576660 |title=Class action suit filed against Symantec Corporation and its officers and directors alleging misrepresentations, false financial statements and insider trading. |date=August 14, 1996 |publisher=Business Wire |access-date=July 12, 2013 |archive-date=May 17, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517170704/https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Class+action+suit+filed+against+Symantec+Corporation+and+its+officers...-a018576660 |url-status=dead }}</ref>