William Henry “Bill” Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, programmer, inventor and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal computer software company, which he co founded with Paul Allen. Bill Gates is one of the most influential and richest people on the planet. Recent estimates of his wealth put it at $56 billion; this is the equivalent of the combined GDP of several African economies. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored and co authored several books.
Bill Gates
Early life: Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or “Trey” because his father had the “II” suffix. At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly.
After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school’s computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with “a disproportionate number of interesting girls.” He later stated that “it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success.” In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the US House of Representatives.
Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft.
In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatory class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates’s solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years; its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.
Bill Gates foundation of Microsoft
Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1976 when he formed a contract with MITTS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) to develop a basic operating system for their new microcomputers. In the early days Bill Gates would review every line of code. He was also involved in several aspects of Microsoft’s business such as packing and sending off orders.
The big break for Microsoft came in 1980 when IBM approached them for a new BASIC operating system for its new computers. In the early 1980s IBM was by far the leading PC manufacture. Microsoft worked hard to sell its operating system to these other companies. Thus Microsoft was able to gain the dominant position of software manufacture just as the personal computer market started to boom. Since its early dominance no other company has come close to displacing Microsoft as the dominant provider of computer operating software.
Bill Gates – Windows
In 1990 Microsoft released its first version of Windows. This was a breakthrough in operating software as it replaced text interfaces with graphical interfaces. It soon became a best seller and was able to capture the majority of the operating system market share. In 1995 Windows 95 was released, setting new standards and features for operating systems. This version of windows has been the backbone of all future releases from Windows 2000 to the latest XP and Vista.
Throughout his time in office Bill Gates has been keen to diversify the business of Microsoft. In one area at least Microsoft has not gained Monopoly power, and that is in the area of search engines. Nevertheless the success of Microsoft in cornering various aspects of the software market has led to several antitrust cases. In 1998 US v Microsoft, Microsoft came close to being broken up into 3 smaller firms. However on appeal Microsoft were able to survive as a single firm.
Success Story: He is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009 excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the world’s second wealthiest person. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires List, Gates is the world’s richest person in 2013, a position that he last held on the list in 2007.
Gates is one of the best known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full time work at Microsoft to part time work, and full time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates’s last full time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as chairman.
Bill Gates is married to Melinda French (married in 1992). They have 3 children Jennifer (1996), Rory (1999) and Phoebe (2002). With his wife Bill Gates formed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates says much of the inspiration came from the example of David Rockefeller. Forbes magazine 2004 estimated that Gates has given over $24 billion dollars in the 4 years from 2000 to 2004.
Success Stories 