As has been announced by the Seattle-based company, Chief Executive of RealNetworks Inc., Rob Glaser will be stepping down from his role 16 years after he had founded the firm.

As has been confirmed by the company, its board has now picked Robert Kimball, the General Counsel and Executive Vice President, to serve as the Acting CEO while RealNetworks starts its hunt for a replacement. Mr. Glaser will continue to now act as the Chairman.

An ex-Executive of Microsoft Corp., Mr. Glaser established RealNetworks in 1994 under the name Progressive Networks, and the company went on to become one of the leaders in technology for transmitting audio and video over the Internet.

However, RealNetworks never managed to completely recover after the 2000 collapse of the dot-com bubble, and since then, it has shifted product focus various tomes. For most part of the past decade, the firm's shares have stagnated.

In an e-mail that was sent out on his behalf to all the employees, Mr. Glaser said, "While there's never an ideal time to make a change like this, this is as good a time as any".