BILL GATES

Bill Gates and His Impact in the Computer World



Bill Gates and His Impact in the Computer World

Introduction

William "Bill" Henry Gates III is an American entrepreneur and programmer. Bill Gates has long been one of the richest men in the world. His current fortune is estimated at 56 billion U.S dollars, making him the second richest man in the world. Gates founded the Microsoft Corporation in 1975, along with Paul Allen. He owns about 1.1 billion shares of Microsoft (about 30 billion U.S. $). Since December 2004, he is also a member of the Supervisory Board (Board of Directors) of Berkshire Hathaway.

On 12 September 2007, he officially said goodbye to the corporate assembly of his company on 27 June 2008. He has given most of his money to support global health initiatives and the improvement of learning opportunities, such as the Gates Library Initiative, which provided computers and Internet access to local libraries in low-income communities.

Discussion

Born on October 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle, Washington, with his two sisters. His father was an attorney and his mother was a schoolteacher. Early on in his life, Gates's parents wanted Bill to attend law school. By the eighth grade, it was clear that Bill Gates's love for computers and programming would take him in a different direction. Before his graduation from high school, Gates had written the school's computer program for scheduling classes and had formed a business venture with Paul Allen to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In 1973, he entered Harvard and developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first computer. While at Harvard, Gates started Microsoft, a company he had established with his childhood friend, Paul Allen, that was devoted to improving software technology. He also met his future business partner, Steve Ballmer, whom he later appointed as CEO of Microsoft. He left Harvard in 1976, with the support of his family, to devote his full-time energies to Microsoft. Gates was now in the forefront of the personal computing revolution and global interactive networking. As such, he was primarily responsible for the company's product strategy. Although he was an active software developer in the early years, he focused most of his energy on the management functions of the company. One of his best business moves was to make sure all computers came with Windows pre-installed. In subsequent years, Microsoft came under government scrutiny for these business practices.

In addition to his love of computers and software and his desire to give money back to society, Gates is a devoted family man. He was married on January 1, 1994, to Melinda French. They have three children. Gates is an avid reader and enjoys playing tennis, golf, and bridge. He has also authored and coauthored several books. In fact, his first coauthored book, The Road Ahead(1995), was published as a trade paperback and has been translated into numerous languages.

On June 26, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his executive role at ...