Bill Gates - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate

Business magnate

A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...

, investor

Investor

An investor is a party that makes an investment into one or more categories of assets --- equity, debt securities, real estate, currency, commodity, derivatives such as put and call options, etc...

, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, the software company he founded with Paul Allen

Paul Allen

Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates...

. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people

Forbes list of billionaires

Forbes list of billionaires is based on an annual assessment of wealth and assets compiled and published by Forbes magazine on March 10, 2011.-Forbes list of billionaires :...

and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third.
During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect

Software architect

Software architect is a general term with many accepted definitions, which refers to a broad range of roles. Generally accepted terminology and certifications began appearing in connection with this role near the beginning of the 21st century.-History:...

, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock

Common stock

Common stock is a form of corporate equity ownership, a type of security. It is called "common" to distinguish it from preferred stock. In the event of bankruptcy, common stock investors receive their funds after preferred stock holders, bondholders, creditors, etc...

.

Discussions

Quotations

That's OK, I'm the same when I talk to Steve Jobs.

On being told, during a 1996 interview for the now-defunct magazine Windows_Sources|Windows Sources that the writer was "a little starstruck" at finding himself talking to Gates in person.

It's not manufacturers trying to rip anybody off or anything like that. There's nobody getting rich writing software that I know of.

Interview with Dennis Bathory-Kitsz in 80 Microcomputing (1980)

Instead of buying airplanes and playing around like some of our competitors, we've rolled almost everything back into the company.

Comment to reporters during the IBM PC launch (1981), interpreted as a jab at Gary Kildall|Gary Kildall

The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC.

BusinessWeek, 26 November 1984

I believe OS/2|OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time.

OS/2 Programmers Guide, November 1987

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