Bill Gates leaving Microsoft? Like him or loathe him, you won't be able to argue with our list of Bill Gate's biggest ever achievements.
Bill Gates’ 33-year tenure at Microsoft – the only full-time job he’s ever held – ends this month. Since promising beginnings in 1975, Gates has walked his company through the explosion in the popularity of the home PC, the growth of the internet, and the adoption of the Windows PC as all-in-one entertainment centre. Here are Bill’s biggest triumphs.
1. Being a businessman first
Sure, Bill’s a geek. His love for computer code began early, when he wrote a program to automate class scheduling for his high school. But Gates’ drive, tenacity, and perceptiveness ensured Microsoft’s success. His purchase of DOS and its subsequent licensing to IBM in the early 80s, for instance, are great examples of the acute business. That Gates ensured Microsoft was allowed to license MS-DOS to other PC manufacturers is a huge reason that the company became extraordinarily successful.
2. Dropping out of college
Harvard, no less. Gates was in his third year at the prestigious Boston school when he left to run Micro-soft (the hyphen vanished a few years later) with Paul Allen. Leaving Harvard before graduation not only guaranteed endless quips about the world’s richest college dropout, but also signalled the non-conformity that Gates championed during Microsoft’s formative years. Had he not left college early, it’s likely he would have missed the DOS boat altogether, and we’d all be using OS/2.
3. Windows
90 per cent of the world’s home PCs run Windows: no matter how you feel about the OS, that’s pretty good. Gates’ work on MS-DOS paved the way for Windows 1, and his experience with IBM’s OS/2 was invaluable. In 1990, Windows 3 was released, while Windows 95 provided a bedrock for home computing that endures to this day. Windows XP, arguably Microsoft’s finest hour, still enjoys legions of fans.
4. The Zune
Just kidding.
5. Saving Apple
Apple and Microsoft might be the technological equivalents of chalk and cheese nowadays, but Microsoft’s involvement with Steve Jobs’ company in the early years probably saved the Mac from catastrophe. AppleSoft Basic was a Mac version of DOS licensed from Microsoft, and it’s an often-forgotten fact that Microsoft Office was released on Apple hardware long before it hit Windows – tacit admission, perhaps, of Apple’s early OS superiority. And, in 1997, Microsoft invested US$150 million into Apple at a time when its stocks were plunging. After the announcement, which included a commitment that Microsoft would continue to develop applications for Apple hardware, and that Apple would bundle Internet Explorer with all its systems, Apple’s stock rose nearly 35 per cent. Without Microsoft, it’s possible we’d never have had the iPhone at all.
6. Giving it all away
At one point Bill Gates had a personal fortune of more than US$100 billion but, as the saying goes, he can’t take it with him. Perhaps with that in mind, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given away more than US$16 billion since its inception, including quarter of a billion dollars to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative. It looks likely in the developing world, Gates’ charitable donations will leave far more of an impression than Windows ever could.