The Genious of William Henry Gates

The technology we have today can improve our way of life in many ways and we have a very important individual to thank for a special type of computer and many different consoles that amaze and excite our community. William Henry (Bill) Gates III has helped improve technology by creating multiple accounts of technology that will be mentioned in later paragraphs. The significance of Bill Gates will be concluded due to the advancement of technology he has created and the well being of Microsoft and its new and old creations.

William Henry (Bill) Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, investor, author, philanthropist, humanitarian and co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation along with Paul Allen. In 1975, Gates and Allen launched Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000, but he remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. 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 gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. Later in his career, Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors. He donated large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was established in 2000.

Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people, an index of the wealthiest documented individuals, excluding and ranking against those with wealth that is not able to be completely ascertained. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world all but four of those years, and held it consistently from March 2014–July 2017, with an estimated net worth of US$89.9 billion as of October 2017. However, on July 27, 2017, and since October 27, 2017, he has been surpassed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion at the time. 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. The foundation works to save lives and improve global health, and is working with Rotary International to eliminate polio. As of January 2018, Gates had a net worth of $92.3 billion, making him the second richest person in the world, behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He gained a reputation for being distant from others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."] Another executive recalled that he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times. When they met again a month later, Gates "won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor." Gates was an executive who met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. In firsthand accounts of these meetings, the managers described him being verbally combative. He also berated managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.] He interrupted presentations with such comments as "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced.] When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend.”

During Microsoft's early history, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products, but his basic role in most of the company's history was primarily as a manager and executive. Gates has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but as late as 1989 he wrote code that shipped with the company's products. He remained interested in technical details; in 1985, Jerry Pournelle wrote that when he watched Gates announce Microsoft Excel, "Something else impressed me. Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack."

On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that over the next two years he would transition out of his day-to-day role to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy. The great technology created by Bill Gates is greatly used and many people are thankful for his technology. His advancement in this category will be remembered for years long after today. Microsoft has created a technology empire for the world, greatly made by one man, William Henry Gates.