Industry Digital content Founded 1993 Successor Disney Interactive | Founder Paul Allen Headquarters Bellevue Defunct 1998 | |
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Fate Acquired by The Walt Disney Company, 1998 Key people Paul Allen, Mike Slade, Patrick Naughton | ||
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Starwave was a Seattle, Washington based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and led by CEO Mike Slade. The company produced many original CD-ROM titles, including titles for Clint Eastwood, Sting, and Peter Gabriel. They were the original developers of Castle Infinity, the first MMORPG for kids, but Starwave's most lasting mark was in the area of web content sites. They developed ESPN.com, ABCNEWS.com, Outside Online, and Mr. Showbiz.com among other groundbreaking sites, setting the standard for much of the commercial Internet explosion of the late 1990s. Starwave also developed the first site and publishing system for Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com.
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The company merged with Infoseek and was later sold to The Walt Disney Company. In April 1998, Disney purchased the outstanding shares of Starwave from Allen after an initial buy of about thirty percent in 1997. The new entity, Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG) developed the Go.com portal.
In 2004, Disney re-activated the Starwave identity as Starwave Mobile, which published casual games for mobile phones.