Bill Gates
William Henry
"Bill" Gates III was born on born October 28, 1955 and he is the
former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, a name quite familiar
to all of us, as it is the world’s largest personal-computer software company.
He cofounded the company with his long time friend, Paul Allen.
Gates' first exposure to
computers came while he was attending the very famous Lakeside
School in Seattle. A local company offered the use of its computer to the
school through a Teletype link, and the primitive machine entranced young Gates.
Along with fellow student Paul Allen, he began ditching class to work in the
school's computer room. Their work would soon pay off as when Gates was 15, he
and Allen went into business together. The two teens netted $20,000 with
Traf-O-Data, a program they developed to measure traffic flow in the Seattle
area.
Despite his love for computer programming, due to his father's influence, Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973. By his own admission, he was there in physical terms but preferring to spend his time playing poker and video games rather than attending class.
However in December 1974, all that changed when Allen showed Gates a magazine article about the world's first microcomputer, the Altair 8800. Seeing an opportunity for themselves, Gates and Allen called the manufacturer, MITS, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told the president they had written a version of the popular computer language BASIC for the Altair. When he said he'd like to see it, Gates and Allen, who actually hadn't written anything, starting working day and night in Harvard's computer lab. When Allen flew to Albuquerque to test the program on the Altair, neither he nor Gates was sure it would run. But it did run. This catalyzed Gate’s decision to drop out of Harvard and moved with Allen to Albuquerque, where they officially established Microsoft. Gates and Allen were already writing software for other computer start-ups as well including Commodore, Apple and Tandy Corp.
The both of them then moved the company to Seattle in 1979, and that's when Microsoft hit the big time. When Gates learned IBM was having trouble to obtain an operating system for its new PC, Gates bought an existing operating system from a small Seattle company for $50,000, developed it into MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), then licensed it to IBM. The genius of the deal was that while IBM got MS-DOS, Microsoft retained the right to license it to other computer makers.
Much as Gates had anticipated, after the first IBM PCs were released, cloners such as Compaq began producing compatible PCs, and the market was soon flooded with clones. Like IBM, rather than produce their own operating systems, the cloners decided it was cheaper to purchase MS-DOS off the shelf. As a result, MS-DOS became the standard operating system for the industry, and Microsoft's sales soared from $7 million in 1980 to $16 million in 1981.
Microsoft expanded into applications software and continued to grow until 1984, when Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer. The Macintosh's sleek graphical user interface (GUI) threatened to make the Microsoft program obsolete. In response to this threat, Gates announced that Microsoft was developing its own GUI-based operating system called Windows. Gates then took Microsoft public in 1986 to generate capital. The IPO was a roaring success, making Gates one of the wealthiest people in the country overnight.
When Windows was finally released in 1985, it wasn't exactly the breakthrough Gates had predicted.They saw Windows as a rip-off of the Macintosh operating system and sued. The case would drag on until the mid-1990s, when the courts finally decided that Apple's suit had no merit.
Meanwhile, Gates worked on improving Windows. Subsequent versions of the program ran faster and froze less frequently. Third-party programmers began developing Windows-based programs, and Microsoft's own applications became hot sellers. By 1993, Windows was selling at a rate of 1 million copies per month and was estimated to be running on nearly 85 percent of the world's computers.
Microsoft solidified its industry dominance in the mid-1990s by combining Windows with its other applications into "suites" and persuading leading computer makers to preload their software on every computer they sold. The strategy worked so well that by 1999 Microsoft was posting sales of $19.7 billion, and Gates' personal wealth had grown to a phenomenal $90 billion.
But with success has come scrutiny. Microsoft's competitors have complained that the company uses its operating system monopoly to retard the development of new technology-a claim Gates soundly refutes. Nevertheless, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company in 1998 over its practice of bundling software with Windows.
Despite his love for computer programming, due to his father's influence, Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973. By his own admission, he was there in physical terms but preferring to spend his time playing poker and video games rather than attending class.
However in December 1974, all that changed when Allen showed Gates a magazine article about the world's first microcomputer, the Altair 8800. Seeing an opportunity for themselves, Gates and Allen called the manufacturer, MITS, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told the president they had written a version of the popular computer language BASIC for the Altair. When he said he'd like to see it, Gates and Allen, who actually hadn't written anything, starting working day and night in Harvard's computer lab. When Allen flew to Albuquerque to test the program on the Altair, neither he nor Gates was sure it would run. But it did run. This catalyzed Gate’s decision to drop out of Harvard and moved with Allen to Albuquerque, where they officially established Microsoft. Gates and Allen were already writing software for other computer start-ups as well including Commodore, Apple and Tandy Corp.
The both of them then moved the company to Seattle in 1979, and that's when Microsoft hit the big time. When Gates learned IBM was having trouble to obtain an operating system for its new PC, Gates bought an existing operating system from a small Seattle company for $50,000, developed it into MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), then licensed it to IBM. The genius of the deal was that while IBM got MS-DOS, Microsoft retained the right to license it to other computer makers.
Much as Gates had anticipated, after the first IBM PCs were released, cloners such as Compaq began producing compatible PCs, and the market was soon flooded with clones. Like IBM, rather than produce their own operating systems, the cloners decided it was cheaper to purchase MS-DOS off the shelf. As a result, MS-DOS became the standard operating system for the industry, and Microsoft's sales soared from $7 million in 1980 to $16 million in 1981.
Microsoft expanded into applications software and continued to grow until 1984, when Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer. The Macintosh's sleek graphical user interface (GUI) threatened to make the Microsoft program obsolete. In response to this threat, Gates announced that Microsoft was developing its own GUI-based operating system called Windows. Gates then took Microsoft public in 1986 to generate capital. The IPO was a roaring success, making Gates one of the wealthiest people in the country overnight.
When Windows was finally released in 1985, it wasn't exactly the breakthrough Gates had predicted.They saw Windows as a rip-off of the Macintosh operating system and sued. The case would drag on until the mid-1990s, when the courts finally decided that Apple's suit had no merit.
Meanwhile, Gates worked on improving Windows. Subsequent versions of the program ran faster and froze less frequently. Third-party programmers began developing Windows-based programs, and Microsoft's own applications became hot sellers. By 1993, Windows was selling at a rate of 1 million copies per month and was estimated to be running on nearly 85 percent of the world's computers.
Microsoft solidified its industry dominance in the mid-1990s by combining Windows with its other applications into "suites" and persuading leading computer makers to preload their software on every computer they sold. The strategy worked so well that by 1999 Microsoft was posting sales of $19.7 billion, and Gates' personal wealth had grown to a phenomenal $90 billion.
But with success has come scrutiny. Microsoft's competitors have complained that the company uses its operating system monopoly to retard the development of new technology-a claim Gates soundly refutes. Nevertheless, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company in 1998 over its practice of bundling software with Windows.
Regardless of the problems he faced, He
is consistently ranked among 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 second wealthiest person. 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 or co-authored several books
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