Profile of RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser

RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser describes the success of his five-year-old company as "remarkable"

In this story: RealNetworks and the future of multimedia RealNetworks and music piracy RELATED STORIES, SITES

From James Hattori
CNNdotCOM Correspondent

SEATTLE (CNN) -- You could say Rob Glaser is the man who broke the sound barrier on the Internet.

As the 38-year-old billionaire and CEO of RealNetworks, Glaser founded the company that pioneered technology to download audio and video over the Internet. The technology boasts 150 million users and, according to Glaser, it's the fourth-most-used piece of home software.

RESOURCES RealPlayer Microsoft Windows Media Player QuickTime

"This fascination with the convergence of media and technology -- that's something that's compelled me for probably 20 years," Glaser said.

Microsoft is breathing down Glaser's neck with its Windows Media Player, but Glaser knows his competitor well. After graduating from Yale with a masters degree in economics, he joined Microsoft in 1983 at the age of 21.

"I thought about it for a little while and decided, you know, hey I'm young. If this doesn't work out, I can do something else," he said.

And after 10 years at Microsoft, he did do something else. Glaser walked away from the company a wealthy man, took some time off, and then founded RealNetworks in 1994. He says he was inspired after seeing an early form of Netscape called Mosaic.

"I downloaded Mosaic and, immediately, all the light bulbs went off. It was like, hey, this is how we're going to do interactive television, but instead of doing it on a brand new infrastructure, we're going to start with the world that I knew very well," he said.

Today, RealNetworks is a $3 billion company and Glaser is a globetrotting, fast-talking evangelist preaching the future of multimedia on the Web.

He surrounds himself with luminaries like filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who is building a digital movie studio. He also schmoozes with national policy leaders like former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

Glaser has no shortage of ideas about both technology and social causes. And he can afford to support them, owning some 50 million shares of RealNetworks worth more than a billion. The company that originally called itself Progressive Networks earmarks 5 percent of its profits for a research foundation.

But at the core of the business is a technology called streaming media -- a way of sending big, unwieldy files or digital audio and video through the narrow Internet spigot in our homes.

As a result, you can play MP3 music files on demand, tune into live radio stations across the nation and call up video feeds of news, movie clips and commercials.

Glaser schmoozes with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola

"I think some days he's feared," said Greg Vogel, a stock analyst who follows RealNetworks. "Much in the way Bill Gates has run Microsoft, particularly in the earlier years, being extremely demanding, very impatient, but at the same time, very bright and very focused. (He's) delivered on what he set out to do."

Lately, Glaser has set out to moderate the strident debate over Napster and music piracy over the Internet.

"I think we combine a deep understanding of what consumers want," he said, "with a deep respect for and understanding of the interests of rights holders and the interests of artists."

RealNetworks software downloads songs just like Napster, but Glaser has made concessions to the recording industry. When RealJukebox was introduced a year ago, the company assured record companies that the product's ability to download MP3s was for personal use. It's difficult for people to pirate MP3s through RealJukebox, Glaser said.

Some might say he's even forged a pact with the devil by partnering with Edgar Bronfman, who, until recently, controlled one of the biggest recording companies -- Universal Music.

"I think all this stuff, ultimately, is going to blow over," Glaser said. "Once the record companies make their collections available in a reasonable way, from an economic standpoint, consumers don't have to choose between not downloading or downloading illegally."

RealPlayer allows you to watch video and tune into live radio stations

In the meantime, he's striking out in a totally different direction -- buying the Professional Bowlers Association. It's a subject that Glaser, a longtime league bowler, obviously feels strongly about. The RealNetworks building houses two lanes in the basement.

With technologies and strategies constantly evolving, it's far from all fun and games at RealNetworks. But with his enthusiasm and energy, Glaser leads from the front.

"I'm like a kid in a candy store" when it comes to using his company's products and brainstorming with his engineers about ideas, Glaser said.

"That's most fun É that, and seeing how the medium changes people's lives, are probably the two most exciting things about what I do."

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