William Henry “Bill” Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. 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. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Table of Contents:
1. Early life and education
2. Career
3. Microsoft
4. Gates Foundation
5. Personal life
6. Awards and recognition
7. Philanthropy
8. Bibliography
9. Further reading
10. External links
Early life and education:
Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955. He is the son of William H. Gates Sr. (1925–2020) and Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994). His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates’ maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He is the fourth of his family’s six children.
Gates’ father was a Seattle attorney and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a Congregational church. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that “it didn’t matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock, there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing”.
Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School in Seattle. When he was in the eighth grade, Lakeside’s accelerated program moved him ahead one year. He started high school at the age of 13. At Lakeside, he befriended Paul Allen, who later co-founded Microsoft with Gates.
Career:
Gates in January 2008
In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, who later would succeed Gates as Microsoft CEO. Gates had already programmed a tic-tac-toe game as a kid, and after reading an article in Popular Mechanics about the Altair 8800 microcomputer in January 1975, he wrote a BASIC computer program to play tic-tac-toe. Allen showed Gates the article and they started corresponding. Gates dropped out of Harvard after two years while Allen continued at Harvard for another year.
Gates and Allen formed a partnership called Allen & Gates, and their first product was a version of the Altair BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800. Gates and Allen licensed the software to MITS Corporation in exchange for stock options, and they founded Microsoft Corporation in 1975. Gates took on the role of CEO of Microsoft, a position he held until stepping down in January 2000, but he remained as chairman and chief software architect. 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 retired from his role as chief software architect on June 27, 2008.
Microsoft:
Gates in October 2011
In November 1975, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft, a portmanteau of “microcomputer” and “software”. Allen came up with the original name of “Micro-Soft”, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, “ASCII Microsoft”. The company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the operating system business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix. However, it was MS-DOS that solidified the company’s dominance. After negotiating with Digital Research to release it from the CP/M monopoly, Gates and Allen licensed MS-DOS (originally written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products) to IBM in 1981 for use on the IBM PC.
When IBM’s personal computer (PC) became successful, Microsoft rose to dominance of the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems.
Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. In the 1980s, Microsoft was accused of monopolizing the PC market. In 2001, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that it had abused monopoly power in the PC market in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case was settled in 2004, with Microsoft agreeing to some minor restrictions.
Gates Foundation:
Gates at a 2008 forum on the role of information technology in global development
In 1994, Bill and Melinda Gates established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a private charitable foundation. The foundation makes grants to organizations and individuals in the areas of global health, education, public libraries, and support for at-risk families. In 2009, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.
In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and Gates donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013 as the world’s wealthiest charitable foundation. In 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates, along with the Gates Foundation, were honored with the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. In May 2013, Gates received an honorary doctorate from the University at Buffalo. In June 2014, Gates received an honorary doctor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2015, Gates received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Harvard University.
Gates has expressed concern that overpopulation could contribute to a Malthusian catastrophe. In 2010, he and Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, a campaign to encourage wealthy people to make a commitment to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. In a letter to Warren Buffett, Gates listed his and Buffett’s motivation for starting the Giving Pledge as follows:
“Both of us see this as a unique time in history. The world has never been richer, yet most people still live in poverty. We hope our Pledge will help change that.
We’ve been enormously fortunate, and feel a responsibility to give back to society. The world is a better place when we use our wealth to help others.”
Personal life:
Gates and his wife Melinda at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival
Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children:
Jennifer Katharine (b. 1996),
Rory John (b. 1999),
Phoebe Adele (b. 2002).
The family resides in Xanadu 2.0, an earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.
Gates is left-handed. He has dyslexia, but he was able to overcome it.
In 2009, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. As of June 2017, Gates had given away $32.9 billion of his Microsoft stock, approximately 7% of his total wealth, much of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Awards and recognition:
Gates has received many awards and honors. He was ranked as the world’s wealthiest person from 1995 to 2007 and again in 2009. Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of the last ten years. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of “Heroes of our time”.
In 2000, Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged. In 2005, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States, by President George W. Bush. In 2006, Gates and Melinda Gates received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. In 2009, they were ranked as the second most powerful couple by Forbes magazine. In 2013, Bill and Melinda Gates were awarded the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for their reading of their children’s book, The World According to Mister Rogers.
Philanthropy:
Gates has donated large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world’s largest private charity. In 2000, Gates and his wife founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is reportedly the world’s largest transparently operated private foundation. In 2006, Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of the last ten years. In 2010, the Financial Times ranked Gates number one in its annual list of the world’s top 50 philanthropists. In 2013, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.
Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, he gave $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the construction of a computer science building, the Gates Building. In 2000, Gates donated $5 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. In 2001, he gave $100 million to the United Negro College Fund. In 2002, Gates donated $51 million to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2006, he gave $30 million to the University of Washington. In 2007, Gates donated $290 million to the global health program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bill Gates Quotes
“I am not topper in my university but all toppers are working in my microsoft company.”
“Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students.”
“The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.”
“Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.”
“If you are born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor it’s your mistake.”
“I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.”
“Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.”
“I think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it’s made by Warren Buffett.”
“Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.”
“Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.”
“There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.”
“I can say this is the best nonfiction story I’ve read in a long time.”
“Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.”
“Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”
“Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.”
“Well, I went for a ride but I didn’t find my car.”
“I get more spam than anyone I know.”
“The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.”
“internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.”
“Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.”
“Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.”
“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”
“In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.”
“Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.”
“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.”
“The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.”
“If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.”
“We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.”
“Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.”
“The vision is about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.”
“I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.”
“Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.”
“The future of advertising is the Internet.”
“Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.”
“Power comes not from knowledge kept but from knowledge shared.”
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
“You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.”
“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.”
“I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.”
“If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.”
“Some people may call me a nerd. I claim the label with pride.”
“Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.”
“In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.”
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”
“What I do best is share my enthusiasm.”
“There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw. It’s like saying that as of 1932, cars didn’t have radios in them, so they should never have radios in them.”
“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.”
“Google’s done a super good job on search; Apple’s done a great job on the IPod.”
“When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.”
“Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.”
“I’m usually not one for tear-jerkers about death and dying…but this book definitely earned my admiration—and tears.”
“If we do a really great good job on new vaccines and health care, we can lower the world population by 10 to 15%.”
“It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.”
“Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.”
“Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.”
“Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.”
“Business is a money game with few rules and a lot of risk.”
“Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.”
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
“Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.”
“It’s hard to improve public education – that’s clear.”
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
“You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.”
“Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.”
“In this business, by the time you realize you are in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.”
“What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.”
“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”
“Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.”
“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”
“If you give people tools, and they use their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.”
“If you’re a person struggling to eat and stay healthy, you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you’ll never have heard of Bill Gates.”
“If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‘satisfactory,’ I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?
“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”
“Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world, if you do so, you are insulting yourself.”
“I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.”
Sources: Wikipedia Britannica Twitter Gates Notes Gates Foundation Forbes Facebook Bloomberg Linkedin Instagram