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Bill Gates Biography (William HenryGates III): Microsoft Founder Famous for : Being the richest man in theworld, a cofounder of the software companyMicrosoft, and for being one of the world'smost generous philanthropists.Gates details : Born - USA October 28,

1955 Lives - United States of AmericaMore Gates : Buffett Gives to GatesFoundation - Person of the Year 2005 -Melinda Gates - Richest Man in the World

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Bill Gates is one of the most influential people in theworld. He is cofounder of one of the most recognizedbrands in the computer industry with nearly every desk

top computer using at least one software program fromMicrosoft. According to the Forbes magazine, Bill Gatesis the richest man in the world and has held the number one position for many years.

Gates was born and grew up in Seattle, WashingtonUSA. His father, William H. Gates II was a Seattleattorney and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates was aschool teacher and chairperson of the United Way

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charity. Gates and his two sisters had a comfortableupbringing, with Gates being able to attend theexclusive secondary "Lakeside School".

Bill Gates started studying at Harvard University in 1973where he spent time with Paul Allen. Gates and Allen

worked on a version of the programming languageBASIC, that was the basis for the MITS Altair (the firstmicrocomputer available). He did not go on to graduatefrom Harvard University as he left in his junior year tostart what was to become the largest computer softwarecompany in the world; Microsoft Corporation.

Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation "To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential." Microsoft MissionStatement After dropping out of Harvard Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen set about revolutionizing the computer 

industry. Gates believed there should be a computer onevery office desk and in every home.

In 1975 the company Micro-soft was formed, which wasan abbreviation of microcomputer software. It soonbecame simply "Microsoft"® and went on to completelychange the way people use computers.

Microsoft helped to make the computer easier to usewith its developed and purchased software, and made ita commercial success. The success of Microsoft beganwith the MS-DOS computer operating system thatGates licensed to IBM. Gates also set about protectingthe royalties that he could acquire from computer software by aggressively fighting against all forms of software piracy, effectively creating the retail softwaremarket that now exists today. This move was quitecontroversial at the time as it was the freedom of sharing that produced much innovation and advances inthe newly forming software industry. But it was thisstand against software piracy, that was to be central inthe great commercial success that Microsoft went on toachieve.

Bill Gates retired as Microsoft CEO in 2008.

Bill Gates Criticism

With his great success in the computer softwareindustry also came many criticisms. With his ambitiousand aggressive business philosophy, Gates or hisMicrosoft lawyers have been in and out of courtroomsfighting legal battles almost since Microsoft began.

The Microsoft monopoly sets about completelydominating every market it enters through either acquisition, aggressive business tactics or a

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combination of them. Many of the largest technologycompanies have fought legally against the actions of Microsoft, including Apple Computer , Netscape, Opera,WordPerfect, and sun Microsystems.

Bill Gates Net Worth

With an estimated wealth of $53 billion in 2006, BillGates is the richest man in the world and he should bestarting to get used to the number spot as he has beenthere from the mid-ninties up until now. The famousinvestor Warren Buffett is gaining on Gates though withan estimated $46 billion in 2006.

Microsoft hasn't just made Bill Gates very wealthythough. According to the Forbes business magazine in2004 Paul Allen, Microsoft cofounder was the 5thrichest man in the world with an estimated $21 billion.While Bill Gates' long time friend and Microsoft CEO,Steve Ballmer was the 19th richest man in the world at

$12.4 billion.

See more information the Bill Gates Net Worth page.

Bill Gates PhilanthropyBeing the richest man in the world has also enabledGates to create one of the world's largest charitablefoundations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationhas an endowment of more than $28 billion, withdonations totaling more than $1 billion every year. Thefoundation was formed in 2000 after merging the "GatesLearning Foundation" and "William H. GatesFoundation". Their aim is to "bring innovations in healthand learning to the global community".

Bill Gates continues to play a very active role in theworkings of the Microsoft Company, but has handed theposition of CEO over to Steve Ballmer. Gates now holdsthe positions of "Chairman" and "Chief SoftwareArchitect". He has started that he plans to take on fewer responsibilities at Microsoft and will eventually devoteall his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2006, the second richest man in the world, WarrenBuffett pledged to give much of his vast fortune to theBill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates Receives a KBEIn March 2005 William H. Gates received an "honorary"knighthood from the queen of England. Gates wasbestowed with the KBE Order (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for hisservices in reducing poverty and improving health in thedeveloping countries of the world.After the privately held ceremony in Buckingham Palacewith Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Gates commented

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on the recognition.."I am humbled and delighted. I am particularly pleased that this honor helps recognize the real heroes our foundation (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)supports to improve health in poor countries. Their incredible work is helping ensure that one day all 

 people, no matter where they are born, will have thesame opportunity for a healthy life, and I'm grateful toshare this honor with them." 

The KBE Order of the British Empire is the secondhighest Order given out, but it is only an honoraryknighthood as only citizens that are British or a part of the Commonwealth receive the full Order. This meansthat Gates does not become Sir Bill Gates.

Bill Gates lives near Lake Washington with his wifeMelinda French Gates and their three children. Interestsof Gates include reading, golf and playing bridge.

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Bill Gates Quotes

Information technology and business are becominginextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talkmeaningfully about one without the talking about theother.Bill Gates - Internet - Technology - Business

Your most unhappy customers are your greatestsource of learning.Bill Gates - Customers - Learning

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Bill Gates Biography

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Bill Gates – A story of SuccessWilliam H. Gates is chairperson and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing.

Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in a family having rich business, political and communityservice background. His great-grandfather was a state legislator and a mayor, his grandfather was vice president of national bank and his father was a lawyer.

Bill strongly believes in hard work. He believes that if you are intelligent and know how to applyyour intelligence, you can achieve anything. From childhood Bill was ambitious, intelligent andcompetitive. These qualities helped him to attain top position in the profession he chose. Inschool, he had an excellent record in mathematics and science. Still he was getting very bored inschool and his parents knew it, so they always tried to feed him with more information to keephim busy. Bill’s parents came to know their son's intelligence and decided to enroll him in aprivate school, known for its intense academic environment. It was a very important decision inBill Gate's life where he was first introduced to a computer. Bill Gates and his friends were verymuch interested in computer and formed "Programmers Group" in late 1968. Being in this group,they found a new way to apply their computer skill in university of Washington. In the next year,they got their first opportunity in Information Sciences Inc. in which they were selected asprogrammers. ISI (Information Sciences Inc.) agreed to give them royalties whenever it mademoney from any of the group’s program. As a result of the business deal signed with InformationSciences Inc., the group also became a legal business.

Bill Gates and his close friend Allen started new company of their own, Traf-O-Data. Theydeveloped a small computer to measure traffic flow. From this project they earned around$20,000. The era of Traf-O-Data came to an end when Gates left the college. In 1973, he lefthome for Harvard University. He didn’t know what to do, so he enrolled his name for pre-law. Hetook the standard freshman courses with the exception of signing up for one of Harvard's

toughest mathematics courses. He did well over there, but he couldn’t find it interesting too. Hespent many long nights in front of the school's computer and the next day asleep in class. After leaving school, he almost lost himself from the world of computers. Gates and his friend PaulAllen remained in close contact even though they were away from school. They would oftendiscuss new ideas for future projects and the possibility of starting a business one fine day. At theend of Bill's first year, Allen came close to him so that they could follow some of their ideas. Thatsummer they got job in Honeywell. Allen kept on pushing Bill for opening a new softwarecompany.

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Within a year, Bill Gates dropped out from Harvard. Then he formed Microsoft. Microsoft's visionis "A computer on every desk and Microsoft software on every computer". Bill is a visionaryperson and works very hard to achieve his vision. His belief in high intelligence and hard workhas put him where he is today. He does not believe in mere luck or God’s grace, but just hardwork and competitiveness. Bill’s Microsoft is good competition for other software companies andhe will continue to stomp out the competition until he dies. He likes to play the game of Risk andthe game of world domination. His beliefs are so powerful, which have helped him increase hiswealth and his monopoly in the industry.Bill Gates is not a greedy person. In fact, he is quite giving person when it comes to computers,internet and any kind of funding. Some years back, he visited Chicago's Einstein ElementarySchool and announced grants benefiting Chicago's schools and museums where he donated atotal of $110,000, a bunch of computers, and provided internet connectivity to number of schools.Secondly, Bill Gates donated 38 million dollars for the building of a computer institute at StanfordUniversity. Gates plans to give away 95% of all his earnings when he is old and gray.

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Bill GatesFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search For other people named Bill Gates, see Bill Gates (disambiguation).

Bill Gates

Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2007

BornOctober 28, 1955 (1955-10-28) (age 54)Seattle, Washington, USA

Residence Medina, Washington, USA

 Nationality American

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Alma mater Harvard University (dropped out in1975)

Occupation

Chairman of  Microsoft (non-executive)Co-Chair of Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation

Director of Berkshire HathawayCEO of Cascade Investment

 Net worth ▲US$53 billion (2010)[1]

Spouse(s) Melinda Gates (1994–present)

Children 3

ParentsWilliam H. Gates, Sr.Mary Maxwell Gates

Signature

WebsiteBill Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955)[2] is an American businessmagnate, philanthropist, author and chairman[3] of Microsoft, the software company hefounded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people[4] 

and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was rankedthird.[5] During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software

architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of thecommon stock.[6] He has also authored or co-authored several books.Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution.Although he is admired by many, a number of industry insiders criticize his businesstactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases beenupheld by the courts (see Criticism of Microsoft).[7][8] In the later stages of his career, Gates

has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money tovarious charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill &

Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. Heremained as chairman and created the position of 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 graduallytransferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates' last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. Heremains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

Contents

[hide]1 Early life 2 Microsoft 2.1 BASIC 2.2 IBM partnership 2.3 Windows 2.4 Management style 2.5 Antitrust litigation 2.6 Appearance in ads 3 Post-Microsoft 

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4 Personal life 4.1 Philanthropy 4.2 Recognition 4.3 Investments 5 Bibliography 6 Filmography 

7 Notes 8 See also 9 References 9.1 Books 10 Further reading 11 External links 

Early lifeGates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates, of English, German, and Scotch-Irish descent.[9][10] His family was upper middle class; hisfather was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First

Interstate BancSystem and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national

bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister,

Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates IIIor "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix.[11] Early on in his life,Gates' parents had a law career in mind for him.[12]

At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school.[13] When hewas in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from LakesideSchool's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer timeon a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students.[14] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue hisinterest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-

tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated bythe machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected

 back on that moment, he commented on it and said, "There was just something neat aboutthe machine."[15] After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other studentssought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was aPDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakesidestudents—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caughtthem exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.[16]

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software inexchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went toCCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system,including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement withCCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year,

Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program inCOBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators becameaware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program toschedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes withmostly female students. He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from amachine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success."[15] At age 17, Gatesformed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel

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8008  processor.[17] In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S.House of Representatives.[18]

Bill Gates' mugshot from a traffic violation in 1977

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on theSAT[19] and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.[20] While at Harvard, hemet Steve Ballmer , who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft, and computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou, with whom he wrote a paper about pancake sorting.[21] Hedid not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard[22] and spent a lot of timeusing the school's computers. He remained in contact with Paul Allen, joining him atHoneywell during the summer of 1974.[23] The following year saw the release of theMITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as theopportunity to start their own computer software company.[24] He had talked thisdecision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gateswanted to start a company.[22]

MicrosoftMain articles: History of Microsoft and Microsoft

BASIC

MITS Altair 8800 Computer with 8-inch (200 mm) floppy disk systemAfter reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 

8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC 

interpreter for the platform.[25] In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and hadnot written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed

Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks theydeveloped an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter.The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in

a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired intoMITS,[26] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITSin Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and hadtheir first office located in Albuquerque.[26] Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, andon November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of theSecretary of the State of New Mexico.[26] Gates never returned to Harvard to completehis studies.

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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 anddistributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITSnewsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.[27] This letter was unpopular with many computer 

hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able todemand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continuedto develop programming language software for various systems.[26] The company movedfrom Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.[25]

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 thefirst five years, he personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and oftenrewrote parts of it as he saw fit.[28]

IBM partnershipIn 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed

an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widelyused CP/M operating system.[29] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly,and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentionedthe licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get anacceptable 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 theexclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting theoperating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for aone-time fee of $50,000. Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operatingsystem, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system.[30] 

They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.[31]

Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates President of Microsoftand the Chairman of the Board.[25]

WindowsMicrosoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985,and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operatingsystem called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first versionof the new system, mounting creative differences undermined the partnership. Gatesdistributed an internal memo on May 16, 1991, announcing that the OS/2 partnership wasover and Microsoft would shift its efforts to the Windows NT kernel development.[32]

Management styleFrom Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for thecompany's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products,and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it.As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and programmanagers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placedthe company's long-term interests at risk .[33][34] He often interrupted presentations with

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such comments as, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" [35] and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?"[36] The target of his outburst then hadto defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced.[35] Whensubordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'lldo it over the weekend."[3][37][38]

Gates's role at Microsoft for most of its history was primarily a management andexecutive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially beenon a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100 line, but wrote code as lateas 1989 that shipped in the company's products.[37] On June 15, 2006, Gates announcedthat he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicatemore time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.[39]

Antitrust litigationFurther information: United States Microsoft antitrust case and European Union Microsoftcompetition case

Bill Gates giving his deposition at Microsoft on August 27, 1998Many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have hadGates' approval. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave depositiontestimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words like "compete", "concerned" and "we".[40] BusinessWeek reported:Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don'trecall,' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of thetechnology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutorswith snippets of e-mail Gates both sent and received.[41]

Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize hiswords and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said, "Did I fence withBoies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness toBoies in the first degree."[42] Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft hadcommitted monopolization and tying, and blocking competition, both in violation of theSherman Antitrust Act.[42]

Appearance in adsGates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a

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discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. Thesalesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying theshoes he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his ownmugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation.[43] As they arewalking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other 

developers, after getting a yes, he then asks if they are working on a way to makecomputers edible, again getting a yes. Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's ownshow about "nothing" (Seinfeld).[44] In a second commercial in the series, Gates andSeinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people.Post-MicrosoftSince leaving Microsoft, Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the videos rights to the Messenger Lectures series titled The Character of Physical

Law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. Thevideos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva.[45][46]

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of 

Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their 

futures.[47][48]Personal life

Bill and Melinda Gates, June 2009.Gates married Melinda French from Dallas, TX on January 1, 1994. They have threechildren. The Gates' home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake

Washington in Medina. According to King County  public records, as of 2006 the totalassessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual propertytax is $991,000.His 66,000 sq. ft. estate has a 60-foot swimming pool with an underwater music system,as well as a 2500 sq. ft. gym and a 1000 sq. ft. dining room.[49]

Also among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester , a collection of writings byLeonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.[50] Gates isalso known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with aquotation from The Great Gatsby.[51] He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf .[52][53]

Gates was number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999,Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a"centibillionaire".[54] Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings hasdeclined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and themulti-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world

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 because he disliked the attention it brought.[55] Gates has several investments outsideMicrosoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667, and $350,000 bonus totalling$966,667.[56] He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he becamea director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friendWarren Buffett.[57] In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the 2nd wealthiest man

 behind Carlos Slim.Philanthropy

Gates (second from right) with Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, Former British PrimeMinister Gordon Brown, President Yar Adua of Nigeria and other participants in a 'Call toAction on the Millennium Development Goals' during the Annual Meeting 2008 of theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Further information: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Gates began to realize the expectations others had of him when public opinion mountedthat he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew

Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller  and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to createthe William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three familyfoundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is thelargest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.[58] The foundation is setup to allow benefactors access to how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.[59][60] The generosity and extensive philanthropy of  David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and hisfather have met with Rockefeller several times and have modeled their giving in part onthe Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.[61] As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were thesecond most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion tocharity.[62]

The foundation has also received criticism because it invests the assets that it has not yetdistributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, itsinvestments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in thesame developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. Theseinclude companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell intothe developing world.[63] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.[64] It subsequentlycancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, whileusing voting rights to influence company practices.[65]

Recognition

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Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, aswell as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectivelynamed Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year  

for their humanitarian efforts.[66] In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[67] Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the

year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 andwas included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.[68]

In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer 

Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit,Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000;[69] the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing,China, in April 2007;[70] Harvard University in June 2007;[71] the Karolinska Institutet,Stockholm, in January 2008,[72] and Cambridge University in June 2009.[73] He was alsomade an honorary trustee of  Peking University in 2007.[74] Gates was also made anhonorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in2005,[75] in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis

gatesi, in his honor.[76]

In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their  philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly inMexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".[77] In October 2009, it wasannounced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work.InvestmentsCascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated inUnited States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of  Kirkland, WA.bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.TerraPower , a nuclear reactor design company.Bibliography

Honorary titles

Preceded byWarren Buffett

World's Richest Person1996–2007

Succeeded byWarren Buffett

Preceded byWarren Buffett

World's Richest Person2009–2010

Succeeded byCarlos Slim