Mike Harrington (born 1964) is an American programmer and businessman. He is the co-founder of the video game company

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...

. After the success of the first Valve product, ''

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

'' (1998), Harrington left Valve in 2000. In 2006, he co-founded the photo editing service

Picnik Picnik was an online photo editing service which was acquired by Google in 2010. It was headquartered in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The site allowed users to edit images, add styles to imported images and use basic editing ...

Career

Harrington was a game programmer at

Dynamix Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of video games from 1984 to 2001, best known for the flight simulator ''Red Baron'', the puzzle game '' The Incredible Machine'', the '' Front Page Sports'' series, ''Betrayal at Krondor,'' and the online ...

and a designer on the

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

operating system at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. In 1996, Harrington founded Valve with Gabe Newell, another former Microsoft employee. Harrington and Newell funded the development of Valve's debut product, ''

'' (1998), which Harrington also helped program. He said: "At Microsoft you always wonder, 'Is it me being successful or is it Microsoft?' But with ''Half-Life'' I knew Gabe and I had built that product and company from scratch." On January 15, 2000, Harrington dissolved his partnership with Newell and left Valve to spend time with his wife. According to Newell, Harrington did not want to risk another project after the success of ''Half-Life''. In 2006, Harrington co-founded the photo editing service

with friend and former colleague Darrin Massena. Picnik was acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in March 2010. Harrington left Google in March 2011. In January 2012, he co-founded another company with Massena, Catnip Labs. Harrington was CTO at the Committee for Children from 2016 to 2018. Harrington was CTO of Amplion from November 2018 until March 2020.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harrington, Mike Living people American computer businesspeople Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) American video game programmers Google employees Microsoft employees Valve Corporation people American technology company founders