Bill Gross is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 businessman. Born in 1958, he grew up in Encino, California. He founded GNP Loudspeakers (now GNP Audio Video), an audio equipment manufacturer; GNP Development Inc., acquired by Lotus Software

Lotus Software

Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...

; and Knowledge Adventure, an educational software company, later acquired by Cendant

Cendant

Cendant Corporation was a New York-based provider of business and consumer services, primarily within the real estate and travel industries. In 2005 and 2006, Cendant broke up and spun off or sold its constituent businesses...

. Gross graduated with a Bachelor of Science

Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 in Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineering

Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...

 from the California Institute of Technology

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

.

He founded the business incubator

Business incubator

Business incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts...

 Idealab

Idealab

Idealab is a business incubator based in Pasadena, California.-History:Idealab was founded by Bill Gross in March 1996...

 in March, 1996, and serves as the company's Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. He is also credited as the creator of the Sponsored Search model of search advertising where advertisers pay when their ad is clicked.

Gross serves on the boards of numerous companies. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

 and of the Art Center College of Design

Art Center College of Design

Art Center College of Design is a private college located in Pasadena, California, and was cited by BusinessWeek as one of the 60 best design schools in the world. The college’s industrial design program is consistently ranked number one by both DesignIntelligence and U.S...

.

Internet and Technology

One company founded by Gross, GoTo.com, Inc., was the first company to successfully provide an Internet search engine which relied upon sponsored search results and pay-per-click advertisements. Goto.com was later renamed Overture Services Inc. and was then acquired by Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 to provide their Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc....

 products.

In 1996, Bill Gross purchased the domain name answers.com which was later sold to NetShepard and then to GuruNet.

In 2004 Bill Gross created the SNAP search engine which introduced a new hyperlink previewer, Snap Shots.

In 2010, Gross founded and launched TweetUp, a search engine for Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 that promotes the best tweeters on any topic. TweetUp was renamed to "PostUp" to reflect its inclusion of Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 and LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

 status updates.

On January 24, 2011, PostUp acquired popular Twitter client app UberTwitter—after previously purchasing Echofon (for iPhone/iOS) and launching Twitdroyd (for Android OS)—and renamed itself UberMedia.

Solar Energy

Another Gross company is working on development of a rooftop concentrated photovoltaic solar collector

Solar collector

-See also:*Solar thermal collector*Solar water heating*Solar air heating*Photovoltaic module*Renewable heat*Concentrating solar power...

 for flat-roofed commercial buildings. They completed the world's largest corporate solar installation at Google's headquarters in 2006.

During 2010, Gross was also the CEO of eSolar

ESolar

eSolar was founded by the Pasadena-based business incubator Idealab in 2007 as a developer of concentrating solar power plant technology....

, a company that aims to make renewable energy cost-competitive with fossil fuel energy by engineering a paradigm shift in CSP technology, providing a cost-effective and scalable solution. eSolar builds an individual 46 MW power unit on 200 acres and can scale up to 500 MW or larger capacity with multiple units. The company has an order in for a 100MW plant in India (in production) and a 500MW plant in China (forthcoming.)

External links

• Idealab Biography
• Bill Gross talking about Snap.com October 2004, Web 2.0
• Bill Gross talks about his clean technology efforts June 2007, socalTECH.com
• TED Talks: Bill Gross on great ideas for finding new energy at TED
  TED (conference)
  TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
  
  in 2003