You may have heard the name of Bill Gates before, who started with the vision of bringing a computer to every home and is now one of the top 10 richest people in the world. If you haven’t heard of his name, you’ve definitely heard of its company, “Microsoft”. Bill Gates is an American entrepreneur, software developer, businessman and author. Gates, one of the most successful and richest people in the world, is the founder of the technology giant Microsoft. Just like Mark Zuckerberg, he left Harvard University in his third year to do what he loves. Bill Gates has a very modest and patient personality. He has appeared on the cover of Time magazine many times. So, who is this Bill Gates? In this article, we will write about the life of Bill Gates and Microsoft, which plays a key role in the age of technology.
Bill Gates was born in the Capital of America
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, the capital of America. Born as one of three children of a successful lawyer and a teacher mother, Bill Gates was the child of a very wealthy family. Gates started his education life at a public school in North Seattle and then continued his education at Lakeside Private School.
After being introduced to computers at Lakeside School in Seattle, he began skipping classes frequently and spending time in the computer room. The first program Gates coded was “General Electric” and he developed a software that played the tic-tac-toe game against the computer. Bill Gates later started working with his childhood friend Paul Ellen. Bill Gates, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen, were searching for software errors experienced by users so that they could use the large computers of a nearby company without paying money. In this way, this duo became increasingly specialized in computers, and they established their first company called Traf-O-Data in 1972. This company produced software for traffic counting and control systems and they sold this software for 20 thousand dollars. A year later, Bill Gates interned at a weapons company called TRW.
Microsoft’s Founding Story
Gates read the entire encyclopedia series called “World Book” while he was studying in high school. He was accepted to Harvard due to his interest in computers and his father’s influence, his SAT score of 1590 out of 1600. After Bill Gates was accepted to Harvard in 1973, he spent his time playing poker and video games instead of attending classes, until he read an article his former partner Paul Allen showed him. In this article, Altair 8800, the world’s first microcomputer, was described. The duo, very impressed by the article they read, called MITS, the manufacturer of the computer in Mexico. They said that they had BASIC, a programming language for Altair, and Altair manufacturers were very interested in this program and said they wanted to try it. However, they did not have such a program.
Gates and Allen returned to school immediately, and worked day and night on this program in Harvard’s computer laboratories for two months. Unfortunately, the computers at Harvard were not Altair, and they had no idea whether this program would run on the Altair computer. When Allen went to Mexico alone, he tried the program on Altair computers at MITS, he saw that the software worked and Allen was accepted to MITS. Gates later left Harvard to work with his friend Allen. In 1975, the duo founded the company Microsoft, which consists of the words “microcomputer” and “software”. Microsoft was experiencing serious financial difficulties in the beginning.
Shortly after Bill Gates moved to Mexico, the MITS company was closed. However, this did not affect Microsoft. At that time, Microsoft was providing software services to many companies, especially Apple. Allen and Gates ended their Mexican adventures in 1979 and moved to Seattle, but neither of them knew that this period would be a golden period for Microsoft. At that time, Bill Gates learned about the software problems of IBM’s new computers, and he purchased a software infrastructure for 50,000 dollars. After converting that software infrastructure into a system called MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), he sold this system to IBM. Bill Gates later retained the license to sell the same system to other companies, and this is how Microsoft’s unstoppable rise began.
Just as Gates predicted, after the IBM sale, other computer companies wanted to purchase the same system, and they added the MS-DOS system to their libraries because it would be more laborious and costly to code their own software. As a result, the MS-DOS system became the industry’s standard software and increased Microsoft’s sales from $7 million to $16 million.
Apple brought a lawsuit against Microsoft!
Apple released the first Macintosh computer on January 24, 1984. Macintosh, whose user interface was easier and faster than Microsoft’s MS-DOS, began to pose a threat to Microsoft. After this launch, Gates took a quick step and announced that they started to develop their own user interface, namely Windows, which is still used today. Then Bill Gates took Microsoft public with its first IPO(Initial Public Offering), started collecting investments. The IPO was so successful that it made Bill Gates one of the richest people in the world overnight. Everything seemed to be fine, but Windows failed to live up to expectations when it was released. There were serious criticisms about this interface that it was quite slow. Apple was not happy with this situation and sued Microsoft because it saw it as a copy of its own operating systems. The case lasted until the mid-1990s, and eventually the court ruled that there was no copying.
While the lawsuit was ongoing, Gates continued to work on Windows and made the operating system much faster. People who developed third-party programs were doing this through Windows. In 1993, Windows was selling nearly a million units every month, and 85% of the world was already using the Windows operating system. Windows was released on November 20, 1985, it is still being developed today.
Bill Gates’ Fortune
Bill Gates took Microsoft to the public at $21 per share. In this way, the whole world heard the name of Gates, who became a millionaire at the age of 31. Within a year, the value of the company’s stock increased, and in 1987, Gates became a billionaire when the stock reached $90.75. In 1994, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, founded the William H. Gates Foundation to support low-income communities around the world in the education and health sectors. One of the most talked about topics about Bill Gates is his legacy. He stated that he will leave only $10 billion of his fortune to his children and will donate the rest of his money to the foundation he founded. To those who asked why, he said, “I don’t think leaving such a big deal to my children would be a good thing for them.” In August 2019, it was announced that Bill Gates’ wealth is 110 billion dollars.
Bill Gates’ House
Bill Gates has a mansion overlooking Lake Washington. This house corresponds to a total area of 6,100 m2. In 2009, the property tax on this estate was exactly $1 million. This property includes an 18 m2 swimming pool with six music systems, a 230 m2 gym and a 93 m2 dining room, 7 bedrooms and 18 bathrooms. Not finished! There is only a room with a height of 20 meters with a trampoline, a reception hall that can accommodate up to 200 guests, a library of 2100 m2, a cinema hall with 20 seats, and a garage with a width of 23 cars. Bill Gates spent a total of 113 million dollars for this house, and the construction of the mansion took 7 years.
Bill Gates began to gradually withdraw from his position at Microsoft in the 2000s, resigned from the Microsoft presidency in 2014. Bill Gates resigned from the board of directors in the spring of 2020. After his resignation, Gates made a statement on social media platforms: “For Microsoft, leaving the board of directors does not mean moving away from the company in any way.” Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who set out with the vision of having a computer in every home, opened a new door to the technology age. As of January 2021, 76.56% of computers in the world use the Microsoft Windows operating system. Bill Gates left his position at Microsoft to focus more on charity, and he has donated more than $35 billion. In 2010, he signed the Giving Pledge with his close friend, investor and billionaire Warren Buffett, in which he agreed to donate at least half of his wealth. Later, more than 150 people, including Mark Zuckerberg, participated in this oath.
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