Bill Gates

This article is about the founder of Microsoft. For other articles, see Bill Gates (disambiguation).

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Photograph portrait of Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III, KBE, (born October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill Gates, is the co-founder and current Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. According to Forbes magazine in 2004, Gates is the wealthiest person in the world, a position he has held steadily for many years.

Biography

Bill Gates was born in [[MAdrid to William H. Gates, Sr., a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell and the national board of United Way.

Gates attended Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive prep school, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's minicomputer. He later on went to study at Harvard University, but dropped out without graduating to pursue what would become a lifelong career in software development.

While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 (the first commercially successful personal computer) in the mid 1970s. It was inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes.

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). They live in a very large earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington. It is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electrical and electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: It has a large private library with a domed reading room.

Also in 1994, he acquired the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci; as of 2003 it was on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1997, Gates was the victim of a bizarre extortion plot by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was convicted and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison.

Microsoft Corporation

In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Microsoft Corporation to market their version of BASIC, called Microsoft BASIC. It was the primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, and was key to Microsoft's early commercial success.

In February 1976, Gates wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists, which shocked the computer hobbyist community by asserting that a commercial market existed for computer software. Gates stated in the letter that software should not be copied without the publisher's permission, which he equated to piracy. While legally correct, Gates's proposal was unprecedented in a community that was influenced by its ham radio legacy and hacker ethic, in which innovations and knowledge were freely shared in the community. Nevertheless, Gates was right about the market prospects and his efforts paid off: Microsoft Corporation became one of the world's most successful commercial enterprises, and a key player in the creation of a retail software industry.

Microsoft's key moment came when in the late 1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market with its IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was released in 1981. Gates licensed MS-DOS to IBM, which it had acquired from a local computer manufacturer. The story of how Microsoft acquired the original system (QDOS) has inspired much folklore, which often portrays Gates pouncing on a trivial mistake by Digital Research and stealing that company's lead in microcomputer operating systems. It is frequently cited by those who accuse Gates of unethical business practices. In reality, IBM did approach Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC, and spoke to Gary Kildall's wife Dorothy. IBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. IBM then returned to talk to Microsoft. He obtained rights to a cloned design of CP/M, QDOS, from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MSDOS/IBMDOS was born. Later, IBM discovered that Gates' operating system could have infringement problems with CP/M, contacted Kildall, and in exchange for a promise not to sue, made an agreement that CP/M would be sold along with IBMDOS when the IBM PC was released. The price set by IBM for CP/M was $250 and for MSDOS/IBMDOS it was $40. Obviously, MSDOS/IBMDOS outsold CP/M many times over, eventually becoming the standard. By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft gained unprecedented visibility in the microcomputer industry, even rivalling IBM.

During the following years, Gates used his company's growing resources to displace competitors such as WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3, among many others. It is alleged (although never explained in detail) that Gates instructed Microsoft programmers to include special code in one of the MS-DOS versions to make Lotus 1-2-3 produce errors, making it appear to the users as if Lotus's software was the problem.

In the mid-1980s Gates became excited about the possibilities of compact disc for storage, and sponsored the publication of the book CD-ROM: The New Papyrus that promoted the idea of CD-ROM.

In the late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a more advanced operating system, OS/2. The operating system was marketed in connection with a new hardware design, the PS/2, that was proprietary and secret to IBM. As the project progressed, Gates oversaw continuing friction with IBM over the system's design, hardware support, and user interface. Ultimately he came to believe that IBM wanted to marginalize Microsoft from having any input in OS/2's development. On May 16, 1991 Gates announced to Microsoft employees that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the NT kernel. In the ensuing years OS/2 fell to the side and Windows became the favored PC platform.

Some years later, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser displaced Netscape's Navigator, in a turn of events that many attributed to Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows at no extra charge. An opposing view is that the inclusion in Windows was less important in Internet Explorer's adoption than Microsoft's improvement of the browser's features to a level comparable with Navigator.

As the architect of Microsoft's product strategy, Gates has aggressively broadened the company's range of products and, once it has obtained a leading position in a category, has vigorously defended that position. His and other Microsoft executives' strategic decisions have more than once drawn the concern of competition regulators, and in some cases have been ruled illegal.

In 2000, Gates promoted long-time friend and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer to the role of Chief Executive Officer and took on the role of "Chief Software Architect".

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. Critics have called this a response to negative public outcry over the seemingly monopolistic and anti-competitive practices of his company, but those close to Gates say that he had long expressed his plan to eventually give away most (in 1997 the Washington Post reported 90%) of his large fortune. The foundation's grants have provided funds for underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, diseases that strike mainly in the third world, and other causes. In June 1999, Gates and his wife donated US$5 billion to their foundation, the largest single donation ever by living individuals. He has donated more than 100 million dollars to help kids with AIDS.

Accolades

• Honorary KBE from the United Kingdom announced, 2004 [1]
• Top 100 influential people in media, the Guardian, 2001
• The Sunday Times power list, 1999
• Upside Elite 100, Ranked 2nd, 1999
• Top 50 Cyber Elite, TIME magazine, Ranked 1st, 1998
• Top 100 most powerful people in sports, The Sporting News, Ranked 28th, 1997
• CEO of the year, Chief Executive Officers magazine, 1994
• Entomologists have named the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor [2]

File:Bill Gates1.jpg

Microsoft promotional photo

Estimated wealth

According to Forbes list of the World's Wealthiest People [3]: (figures in US Dollars)

• 1996 - $18.5 billion, ranked #1
• 1997 - $36.4 billion, ranked #2
• 1998 - $51.0 billion, ranked #1
• 1999 - $90.0 billion, ranked #1
• 2000 - $60.0 billion, ranked #1
• 2001 - $58.7 billion, ranked #1
• 2002 - $52.8 billion, ranked #1
• 2003 - $40.7 billion, ranked #1
• 2004 - $46.6 billion, ranked #1

Fictional portrayals

Several films and television shows have portrayed fictionalized versions of Bill Gates. Among them:

• The Simpsons (February 15, 1998) (Season 9, Episode 5F11) — Bill Gates comes to "buy" Homer Simpson's Internet company CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999) — an army general complains that his new Windows 98 upgrade crashed is no more stable than his previous copy of Windows 95, and demands to see Bill Gates. When an animated Gates begins to explain just how much stabler Windows 98 actually is using technobabble, the general shoots him.
• Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) — a dramatized film about the history of Apple and Microsoft.
• AntiTrust (2001) — a film about a programmer in a fictional software company. Tim Robbins plays Gary Winston, the corporate head, whose characteristics are believed by some to be derived from Gates. Gates is also mentioned by name in the film.
• Nothing So Strange (2002) — a film about a fictional assassination of Gates in 1999.
• 2DTV (2004) (Series 4, Episode 6) — Bill Gates is seen at his "computer-shaped" home writing a letter to a customer, when the Office Assistant pops up and starts annoying Gates. Ultimately, it drives the animated Gates to near-suicide, at which point the paperclip proclaims, "Hi there, it looks like you're writing a suicide note", and a number of disgruntled customers appear, continuing, "would you like some help?". Gates also appears in episode 4 of this series, in an animated "Matrix for Windows" spoof, mocking the growing size of Microsoft operating systems.
• Family Guy — In one episode, Gates is flying through the air on a jetpack with Disney head Michael Eisner, who says "God, the people look like ants from up here", to which Gates replies, "They are ants, Michael, they ARE ants!"

Real-life quotes

• Nov 1995 - PBS interview with David Frost "In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid."

Books by Bill Gates

• Business @ The Speed of Thought (1999) ISBN 0446675962
• The Road Ahead (1996) ISBN 0140260404

Further reading

• James Wallace (1993) Hard Drive : Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire Harper Business. ISBN 0887306292
• Jeanne M. Lesinski (2000) Bill Gates Lerner Publications Company. ISBN 082259689X
• Janet Lowe (1998) Bill Gates Speaks : Insight from the World's Greatest Entrepreneur John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0471293539

External links

• Home page Bill Gates at Microsoft
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Wikiquote - Quotes by Bill Gates
• Interview with Bill Moyers
• Bill Gates hit with cream pie
• Forbes 400 listing
• BBC: Bill Gates profile