William Henry "Bill" Gates III born on October 28, 1955 and raised in Seattle along with his two sisters, he is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. In 1975, Gates co-founded Microsoft, the world’s largest PC software company, renowned for making
software with Paul Allen. That is powerful and innovative while still being user
friendly. Microsoft now employs more than 55,000 people in 85 countries. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has authored and co-authored several books.
Starting in 1987, Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2014 excluding a few years after the Financial crisis of 2007–08. Between 2009 and 2014 his wealth more than doubled from $40 billion to more than $82 billion. Between 2013 and 2014 his wealth increased by $15 billion. Gates is currently the richest man in the world.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen
turned to a computing company, in exchange for free use of a more
powerful computer they searched for bugs in the computers system while
also learning new languages. Bill went on to Harvard University and
while there teamed up with Paul to write a new version of Basic
programming language for the first personnel computer the Altair 8800.
The company was impressed with Gates and Allen’s work and licensed the
software resulting in Gates and Allen forming the company Microsoft to
develop software for other companies. Bill dropped out of Harvard to
spend more time on the new business.
Their
break came when they developed an operating system called MS-DOS for
the first IBM personnel computer, and later managed to persuade other
manufactures to standardize their systems to run MS-DOS. This
standardization started a new computer industry boom throughout the
1980’s as MS-DOS took hold of the market and gained popularity,
Microsoft also started developing applications such as word processors.
Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates
discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was
being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists
in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce,
distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.
This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates
persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to
demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and
it continued to develop programming language software for various
systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.
Microsoft
announced Windows 1.0 in 1983, which promised a graphical user
interface GUI better graphics and multitasking. However the final
product was not released for another 2 years until 1985, with very few
compatible applications Windows did not sell well.
Over
the next five years Microsoft released a number of upgraded windows 2.0
versions which added many programs, versatility and features. As
Microsoft grew, its share price sky rocketed, and at the age of 31 Bill
Gates became the youngest self-made billionaire in American history.
During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad
responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business
details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years,
Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and
often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.
Partnership with IBM approached Microsoft in July 1980 regarding its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC.
The computer company first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC
interpreter. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an
operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.
IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not
reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the
licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told
him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later, Gates
proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products
(SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal
with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full
owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC,
Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000.
Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system. They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.
Despite IBM's name on the operating system the press quickly identified
Microsoft as being very influential on the new computer. PC Magazine asked if Gates were "the man behind the machine?", and InfoWorld quoted an expert as stating "it's Gates' computer". Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which
re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates
President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board.
In
1990 Microsoft headed by Bill Gates created a new version of Windows
called Windows 3.0 with a much improved GUI and features which sold more
than 10 million copies, quickly followed by Windows 3.1, 3.11 and
workgroups which added networking support. Building on their success
Microsoft developed Windows 95 followed by windows 98, 2000, Millennium
Edition and The current version Windows XP. Each new windows release has
seen Microsoft gain more market share and along with their popular
applications such as Office, games etc has seen Bill Gates become the
richest man in the world worth an estimated US$46 billion.
Gates
also has interests in other business having many investments and
positions in company’s including Corbis Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway
Inc, Teledesic Corporation. In 1998 Gates gave up his role as CEO to
focus on development of new technology and products.
Bill married Melinda French Gates in 1994 and has three children,
Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. Both Bill and Melinda are keen
Philanthropist’s starting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which
has committed more than $3.2 billion to global health, $2 billion to
improve learning opportunities to low income families, $477 million to
community projects and more than $488 million to special projects and
annual giving campaigns.
In 2007 the Los Angeles Times
criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies which
have been accused of worsening poverty, polluting heavily, and
pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.
It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of
investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence
company practices. The Gates Millennium Scholars program has been criticized by Ernest W. Lefever for its exclusion of Caucasian students. The scholarship program is administered by the United Negro College Fund.
In 1987 Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's
400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday.
As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth
$1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year
before, when he'd debuted on the list.
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