Phil Goldman

Phillip York "Phil" Goldman (July 17, 1964 – December 26, 2003) was an American engineer and entrepreneur best known for co-founding WebTV.

Early life

Growing up in San Mateo, California, Goldman attended San Mateo High School graduating in 1982. He graduated first in his engineering class, Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton University in 1986 , in a class that also included Jeff Bezos and David Hitz, founder of NetApp. He served as chair of Princeton's Computer Science Advisory Council, and in 1998, Goldman donated $2 million to his alma mater to endow a chair, becoming the youngest alumnus ever to do so.

Goldman would go on to hold 19 patents, and had 30 more pending at the time of his death.

Career

After college, Goldman went to work for Apple Computer, where he and Erich Ringwald wrote Multifinder (originally called Twitcher) for the Macintosh operating system, Steve Perlman and Bruce Leak were also working for Apple at the time, Steve working in the Advanced Technology Group, and Bruce working on Quickdraw and Quicktime. All three eventually left Apple, Perlman founding Replay Networks, Phil going to General Magic, and Bruce founding Rocket Science Games.

In 1995, the three founded Artemis Research, which became WebTV Networks, Inc., offering a dialup thin client sold to consumers on the basis of ease-of-use and modest cost.

WebTV was literally a Silicon......
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