Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III (b. October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill Gates, is the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corporation, the largest software company in the world. According to Forbes magazine, Gates is the wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of approximately US$ 50.1 billion as of 2005. Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavours, donating billions to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation charity founded in 2000.

Early life

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr., a lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates. With a wealthy background (Gates was born with a million dollar trust fund set up by his grandfather) he was able to access computers from a very early age and his prepatory school actually rented time on an early mini-computer: the DEC PDP-10. Consequently, Bill was able to pursue an interest in computers and had written his first program by the time he was thirteen. While in high school, he and Paul Allen founded Traf-o-Data: a company which sold traffic counting systems to state governments, and helped computerize his school's payroll system. Gates was also a member of the Boy Scouts of America, and attained the rank of Life Scout.

Gates enrolled in Harvard University in 1974, where he met his later business partner Steve Ballmer. During his second year at Harvard, Gates, Paul Allen, and Monte Davidoff co-wrote the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer. Gates dropped out of Harvard during his third year in order to pursue a career in software development.

Founding Microsoft

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Science that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), to inform them that he and others had developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the platform. Allen flew to MITS to unveil the new BASIC system. Since Gates had done all of the actual product development, Allen had never handled an Altair prior to the trip. However, the demonstration was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to buy the rights to Allen and Gates's BASIC for the Altair platform. It was at this point that Gates left Harvard along with Allen to found Micro-Soft, which was later renamed the Microsoft Corporation.

In February 1976, Bill Gates published a diatribe, the "Open Letter to Hobbyists", that expressed his frustration over his belief that the majority of people using the software were not paying for it. This letter was deeply unpopular with many programmers but was to gain significent support from Gate's business partners and allies and became part of the movement which led to closed-source becoming the dominant model of software production. Gates himself has openly admitted to stealing source code from dumpsters in order to learn how to program better.

When IBM decided to build the hardware for a desktop personal computer in 1980, it needed to find an operating system. Microsoft did not have any operating system at this point. The most popular was CP/M developed by Gary Kildall in Monterey with a core logic to marry any software to any hardware. This was the genesis of the entire software industry, as without that inter-operability feature software had to be written differently for different computer hardware. Bill Gates referred IBM to Kildall, but when they did not reach immediate agreement with him they went back to Gates who offered to fill their need himself. He did it by buying a CP/M clone called QDOS ("Quick and Dirty Operating System") from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for $56,000, which Microsoft renamed PC-DOS. Kildall was furious when he learned later what had happened and threatened to sue IBM for using a clone with his essential feature of inter-operability. IBM made a deal to market both the Paterson and Kildall systems, but priced CP/M higher. Bill Gates' great coup in his deal with IBM was retaining the right to licence the DOS to other computer makers—in the long run a fatal mistake by IBM.

File:Time magazine 4 16 84.jpg

In 1984, Bill Gates was featured for the first time on the cover of TIME.

Later, after Compaq successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones. Microsoft was quick to use its position to dominate the home computer operating system market. Microsoft began licensing its OS for use on non-IBM PC clones, and called that version MS-DOS (for Microsoft Disk Operating System). By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft went from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry.

Microsoft continued to develop operating systems as well as software applications. In the early 1980's they created Microsoft Windows which was similar to Apple Computer's Macintosh OS graphical user interface (GUI) and GUI's created by Xerox. The first versions of the Windows OS did not sell well. By the late-1980s, their graphical user interface operating system, Microsoft Windows had begun to make serious headway into the IBM compatible PC software market. The release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 was a tremendous success, selling around 10 million copies in the first two years and cementing Microsoft dominance in operating systems. (See History of Microsoft Windows for more details)

Microsoft eventually went on to be the largest software company in the world, earning Gates enough money to make him the wealthiest person in the world (according to Forbes Magazine) for several years. Gates served as the CEO of the company until 1998 when Steve Ballmer took the position. Gates continues to serve as a chairman of the board at the company and also as a position he created for himself entitled "Chief Software Architect".

Business practices

Under Gates's leadership, Microsoft has frequently been accused of aggressive business practices. In 1998 this culminated in a lawsuit, United States v. Microsoft, which alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales.

Gates was summoned to testify in the case as the chairman of Microsoft. He was called "evasive and non-responsive" by a source present at a session in which Gates was questioned on his deposition. [1] He argued over the definitions of words such as "compete", "jihad", "concerned", "ask", and "we". [2] BusinessWeek reported, "early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance have been directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail Gates both sent and received." [3] Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president as having stated an intention to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications Corporation and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free. The Microsoft executive denied the allegations. [4]

Personal life

Gates married Melinda French of Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002).

Bill Gates lives in a huge earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington together with his family. The Gates home, one of the most expensive houses in the world, is a modern 21st century house in the "Pacific Lodge" style, with classic features such as a large private library with a domed reading room. Electronics are used abundantly; visitors are surveyed upon entrance and given a microchip that sends signals throughout the house to adjust temperature and other conditions according to preset user preferences. According to King County public records, as of 2002, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $113 million, and the annual property tax is just over $1 million. Also among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.

Philanthropy

With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. The foundation's grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in the Third World, and other causes. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund; and as of 2005, had an estimated endowment of $29.0 billion. He has spent about one third of his lifetime income on charity.

Honors

Gates has received two honorary doctorates, from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 2002 and Waseda University in 2005. Gates was also given an Honorary KBE from the United Kingdom in 2005 [5], in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor. [6]

Influence and wealth

Gates has been reported as being among the most influential people in the world, including:

Listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999
Named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994
Ranked at 28 in the "Top 100 most powerful people in sports" by The Sporting News in 1997
Ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998
Ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999
Included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001

Gates has been number one on the "Forbes 400" list through 1993-2005 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" in 1996-2005, except for 1997 when the Sultan of Brunei was included despite Forbes' usual policy of excluding heads of state.

Since 2000, Gates's wealth has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's share price and the multi-billion dollar gifts he has made to his charitable foundations. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $28 billion to charities from 2000 onwards. He is the wealthiest person even when including heads of state whose wealth is tied to their position.

Gates in popular culture

Bill Gates has been the subject of numerous parodies in film, television, and video games, often serving as an archetype for fictional megalomaniacal leaders of powerful corporations. Examples include The Simpsons episode "Das Bus" and the films Tomorrow Never Dies and Antitrust. Alternatively, but less frequently, these references portray a hacker genius. Gates is often characterized as the quintessential example of a super-intelligent "nerd" with immense power. This has in turn led to pop culture stereotypes of Gates as a tyrant or evil genius, often resorting to ruthless business techniques. Several films and television shows have portrayed either the real Bill Gates or a fictionalized version of him, often according to these clichés.

Trivia

On February 4, 1998, while on a visit to Brussels, Gates had a cream pie thrown at his face by Noël Godin, a Belgian agitator.[7]

In 1985, Gates posed for publicity photos while reclining on his desk. On January 16, 2005 these photos were mistakenly attributed to Teen Beat magazine by a blogger, inciting their circulation on the internet.[8]

External links