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GO Corporation was founded in 1987 to create software for mobile computers and personal digital assistants. It was famous not only for its pioneering work in pen-based computing but as well as being one of the most well-funded start-up companies of its time.

The company encountered many difficulties, such as convincing the public of the feasibility and usefulness of hand-held and pen-based computing; having to develop its own handheld, pen-based computers as well jockeying for support among industry giants such as IBM, Apple Computer, AT&T and Microsoft. The hardware group was spun off as a separate company, named EO Inc.. EO Inc. was later acquired by AT&T. GO's PenPoint OS eventually ran on AT&T's EO Personal Communicator, but as tablet computing waned in the 1980s and early 1990s, so did the fortunes of GO, especially in the face of competition from Microsoft's Pen Services for Windows. After burning through $75 million dollars of venture funding, the company closed in 1994.

Its founders were Jerry Kaplan, Robert Carr, and Kevin Doren. Mr. Kaplan subsequently chronicled the history of the company in his book Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure (ISBN 0-7351-0141-8). Omid Kordestani, current VP of Global Business at Google, began his startup career with GO Corporation. Other notable GO alumni include CEO Bill Campbell (currently chairman of Intuit), VP Sales Stratton Sclavos (took VeriSign public as its CEO), CFO and VP of Business Operations Randy Komisar (became CEO of Lucas Arts), and VP Marketing Mike Homer (was VP Marketing at time of Netscape's IPO in 1995).

While much of what transpired at GO was eclipsed by high-fliers of the dot com era that immediately followed GO's demise, the company was famous in its time for its longevity, its constantly shifting fortunes, the amount of money it spent, and the caliber of talent it attracted.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Lawsuit

On 29 June 2005, Kaplan filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft technicians had stolen technology from GO that had been shown to them under a non-disclosure agreement.^[1][2]

In a separate legal matter, in April 2008 certain features of the Windows/Tablet PC operating system and hardware were found to infringe on a patent by GO Corporation concerning user interfaces for pen computers.^[3]

[edit] See also

• Apple Newton
• PenPoint OS

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure
• Barbarians led by Bill Gates - Contains two chapters dealing with the GO story from a view inside Microsoft.
• IDEO - Company that helped develop the EO Personal Communicator, based on the PenPoint operating system.
• Annotated bibliography of references to handwriting recognition and pen computing

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