Phil Goldman
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Phillip York Goldman (July 17, 1964 – December 26, 2003) was an American software engineer and entrepreneur. He was a
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
software engineer at
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
, and was best known for co-founding
WebTV MSN TV (formerly WebTV) was a web access product consisting of a thin client device that used a television for display (instead of using a computer monitor), and the online service that supported it. The original WebTV device design and service ...
.


Early life

Phillip York Goldman was born July 17, 1964, in California. He grew up in San Mateo and
Hillsborough, California Hillsborough is an List of municipalities in California, incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is located south of San Francisco on the San Francisco Peninsula, bordered by Burlinga ...
. Goldman attended
San Mateo High School San Mateo High School is a National Blue Ribbon comprehensive four-year Public school (government funded), public high school in San Mateo, California, San Mateo, California, United States. It serves grades 9–12 and is one of the seven San Mate ...
, graduating in 1982. He graduated first in his engineering class,
Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...
, from
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
in 1986, in a class that also included
Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...
and
David Hitz David Hitz is an American engineer. In 1992, he, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm founded NetApp, where he became an executive vice president. A graduate of Deep Springs College, Hitz earned a BSE from Princeton University and went on to work as ...
, founder of
NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in San Jose, California. It has ranked ...
. He served as chair of Princeton's Computer Science Advisory Council, and in 1998, Goldman, along with his wife Susan, 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 patents pending at the time of his death.


Career

After college, Goldman went to work for
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...
, where he and Erich Ringewald wrote Multifinder (originally called Twitcher) for the
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
operating system. Steve Perlman and Bruce Leak were also working for Apple at the time: Steve in the Advanced Technology Group, and Bruce working on
QuickDraw QuickDraw was the 2D graphics library and associated application programming interface (API) which is a core part of classic Mac OS. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still existed as part of the libraries ...
and
QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...
. 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 In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-Computer performance, performance) computer that has been Program optimization, optimized for Remote desktop, establishing a remote connectio ...
sold to consumers on the basis of ease-of-use and modest cost. WebTV was literally a
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
garage startup, having been founded in half of a storage building for the
Museum of American Heritage The Museum of American Heritage (MOAH) is a museum in Palo Alto, California. It is dedicated to the preservation and display of electrical and mechanical technology and inventions from the 1750s through the 1950s. The museum has a large collect ...
on Alma Street in Palo Alto. Two early employees of Artemis who were also from Apple were Andy Rubin and Joe Britt, who would be two of the founders of Danger, Inc. (originally Danger Research). WebTV leveraged their limited startup funds, provided in part by
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
co-founder
Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, computer programmer, and investor. He co-founded Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the ...
, by licensing a reference design for the appliance to
Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...
and
Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...
. Eventually other companies would also become licensees and WebTV would profit on the monthly service fees. After 22 months, the company was sold to Microsoft for $425 million, with each of the three founders receiving $64 million. Even after the sale of WebTV to Microsoft, the three founders remained in management positions with the company. Goldman left in 2002 to found MailBlocks, Inc., an e-mail provider using
whitelisting A whitelist or allowlist is a list or register of entities that are being provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Entities on the list will be accepted, approved and/or recognized. Whitelisting is the reverse of ...
to fight
spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...
.


Personal life

Goldman tried to build a
Jack in the Box Jack in the Box, Inc. is an American fast food restaurant chain founded on February 21, 1951, by Robert O. Peterson in San Diego, California, where it is headquartered. The chain has over 2,200 locations, primarily serving the West Coast of t ...
restaurant near his office in
Los Altos, California Los Altos (; Spanish language, Spanish for "The Heights") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 31,625 according to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Most of the city's growth ...
, but the city refused him permission. In contrast, his long hours lifting weights at the gym and fastidious diet earned him the nickname "Fat-Free Phil." Goldman's
house rabbit The domestic rabbit (''Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus'') is the domesticated form of the European rabbit, a member of the lagomorph order. A male rabbit is known as a ''buck,'' a female as a ''doe,'' and a young rabbit as a ''kit''. There ar ...
, a gray dwarf, became the unofficial mascot of General Magic. Named "Bowser", it moved to WebTV Networks when Goldman did, roaming the halls, offices and conference rooms, sometimes chewing on cables. The programmers at WebTV adopted "Bowser" as the code name for their browser. Goldman also served as a director of BraveKids, a charity that uses the internet to provide information and support for families of children with serious illnesses. Goldman died on December 26, 2003, at the age 39 at his home in
Los Altos Hills, California Los Altos Hills (; ''Los Altos'', Spanish for "The Heights") is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 8,489 at the 2020 census. The town is known for its affluence and expensive residential ...
. The cause of death was a
heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...
. He is buried at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, California. He is survived by wife Susan Rayl and their two children.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Goldman, Phil 1964 births 2003 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American Jews People from Los Altos Hills, California Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni 21st-century American Jews Burials at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park San Mateo High School alumni