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William (Bill) H. Gates III is co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft, which is the leading provider of software for personal computers.
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955. He and his two sisters grew up in Seattle. Their father, William H. Gates III, is a Seattle attorney. Mary Gates, their mother, was a school teacher, University of Washington regent and chairwoman of United Way International.
Bill attended public elementary school before moving on to the private Lakeside School, situated in North Seattle. There Gates began his career in personal computer software, programming computers at the age of 13.
In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, who is now Microsoft's president. While studying at Harvard, Bill Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer.
In his junior year, Gates dropped out of Harvard to focus his attention on Microsoft, a company he had started in 1975 with his boyhood friend Paul Allen. The two believed, that the personal computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home. So they started developing software applications for PCs. Gates' vision played an important role in Microsoft's success and so h is actively involved in key management and strategic decisions at Microsoft. Much of his time he devoted to meeting with customers and staying in contact with Microsoft employees around the world through e-mail.
Under Gates' leadership Microsoft tried to constantly improve software technology, and to make it easier and more enjoyable for people to use computers. But in the last few years the company is also accused of monopolism and using unfair methods when competing with other companies.
In 1994 Gates established the William H. Gates Foundation, which supports a variety of initiatives of particular interest to Gates and his family. The focus of Gates' philanthropy is in four areas: education, world public health and population; non-profit, civic and arts organizations; and Puget Sound area capital campaigns.
When talking about Bill Gates' family it has to be mentioned, that on January 1, 1994 Bill and Melinda French Gates were married. They have one child, Jennifer Katherine Gates, who was born in 1996.
In 1995 Gates wrote "The Road Ahead", his vision of where information technology will take society. His first book held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks. Published in more than 20 countries, the book sold more than 400,000 copies in China alone.
In 1996, while changing Microsoft's tactic to take advantage of the emerging opportunities of the Internet, Gates revised "The Road Ahead" to reflect his opinion, that interactive networks are a major milestone in human communication. Gates is donating the revenues of his book to a non-profit fund, which supports teachers worldwide, who are incorporating computers into their classrooms.
In 1999 Bill Gates' second book, "Business @ the speed of thought", came out. He wrote it in an attempt to help business leaders take advantage of the incredible changes taking place. In addition Gates thinks, that business will change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50 and businesses that seize the opportunity and use digital tools to move information inside their enterprise, as well as to reach out to customers in new ways, they\'ll lead in this era.
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