Bill Gates
William Henry Gates, III (born October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill
Gates, is the co-founder (together with Paul Allen) and Chairman of
Microsoft Corporation. According to Forbes magazine, he is the wealthiest
man in the world. According to one estimate, Gates possesses more wealth
than the poorest 50 percent of the world's population.
Biography
Born in Seattle, Washington, Bill Gates was a brilliant student who is
generally remembered as being exceedingly egotistical; according to one
account of his high school years, he predicted that he would be a
billionaire by the age of 25. He was a student at Harvard University when he
co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the
Altair 8800 in the mid 1970s. The Altair was the first commercially
successful personal computer. Inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn
programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes,
Gates' and Allen's version of BASIC later became Microsoft BASIC, the
primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, which
was the key to Microsoft's early commercial success. Microsoft Basic became
Microsoft QuickBasic. When released without a compiler it is known as
QBasic. QuickBasic evolved into Visual Basic, versions of which are still
popular today.
In the early 1970s, Gates wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists, which shocked
the computer hobbyist community by insisting that a commercial market
existed for computer software and that such software should not be freely
copied without the publisher's permission. At the time, the community was
strongly influenced by its ham radio legacy and the related Hacker ethic,
which insist that innovations and knowledge should be freely shared in the
community. Gates went on to co-found Microsoft Corporation, one of the
world's most successful commercial enterprises, and led the way toward the
emergence of the commercial software industry.
Gates went on to establish an unsavory reputation for his business
practices. A case in point concerns the origins of MS-DOS. In the late
1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market in with its
IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was released in 1981. IBM needed an
operating system for its new computer, which was based on the newly
developed, 16-bit architecture of the Intel x86 processor family. After
briefly negotiating with another company (the Digital Research Corporation
in California), IBM approached Microsoft. Without revealing their ties with
IBM, Microsoft executives in turn approached Seattle Computer, which had
developed an x86-based operating system, and purchased the operating system
for a reported sum of $50,000. (In Microsoft's defense, they may have been
under agreement not to discuss their talks with IBM, so they really couldn't
have revealed their ties.) Microsoft subsequently licensed the operating
system to IBM (which released it under the PC-DOS name) and worked with
computer manufacturers to include its own version, called MS-DOS, with every
computer system sold. Spectacularly successful, this deal was challenged in
court by Seattle Computer on the grounds that Microsoft had concealed its
relationship with IBM in order to purchase the operating system cheaply;
subsequently, there was a settlement, but no admission of duplicity or
guilt. Gates' reputation was further sullied by a series of major antitrust
actions brought both by the U.S. Department of Justice and individual
companies against Microsoft in the late 1990s.
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.
It is incontestable that Gates has played hardball in the software industry.
It has also been established in a court of law, and unanimously affirmed on
appeal by a pro-business appellate court, that his company, under his
leadership, repeatedly and egregiously engaged in business practices that
violated U.S. laws.
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".
On the personal side, 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).
Along with his wife, Gates has also 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. To put this matter into
perspective, it is worth remembering that these charitable
contributions?whatever their motive?have provided sorely needed funds for
underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, and other
worthy causes.
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.
Estimated wealth
According to Forbes list of the World's Wealthiest People:
* 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
Awards
* Top 100 influential people in media, the Guardian, 2001
* Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans, Ranked 1st, 2001
* Forbes World's richest people list, Ranked 1st, 2001
* Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans, Ranked 1st, 2000
* Forbes World's richest people list, Ranked 1st, 2000
* 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, Sporting News, 1997
* CEO of the year, Chief Executive Officers magazine, 1994
Publications
* Business @ The Speed of Thought (1999)
* The Road Ahead (1996)
