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• June 28, 2008 •
It has happened: this week Bill Gates has ended his full-time employment at Microsoft. The co-founder of Microsoft will not retire from the company completely: he will continue advising Microsoft in a part-time capacity, and will stay on the company's board as chairman.
Gates, 52, is leaving with the legacy of having created and shaped one of the world's most influential corporations. He founded Microsoft back in 1975 together with Paul Allen and while some of Microsoft's business practices have been sharply criticized, there is no denying that, as head of the company, Gates has done more than anyone else to bring computing to the masses.
Bill Gates job at Microsoft has been taken over by three people: Steve Ballmer as CEO, Ray Ozzie as chief software architect, and Craig Mundie as chief research and strategy officer. We will have to wait and see how Microsoft will perform in the years ahead without Gates at the helm.
Meanwhile Bill Gates plans to devote his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which he and his wife founded in 1994 to "help reduce inequities in the United States and around the world," according to the organization's Web site.
The Seattle-based organization, the largest charity of its kind, has asset trust endowments of $37.3 billion and has committed to grants of $16.5 billion during its 14 years. In 2007 it made grants of just over $2B. In 2005 Time magazine named Bill and Melinda Gates as its Persons of the Year for their charitable work.
The foundation was bolstered still further in 2006 when businessman Warren Buffet -- who passed Gates as the world's richest man -- endowed the foundation with more than $3 billion, as part of an ongoing plan to give away at 85 per cent of his fortune, currently estimated at $62 billion.
In an interview earlier this week Gates put his new role in perspective with these words: "This whole thing about which operating system somebody uses is a pretty silly thing versus issues involving starvation or death." One can only salute him for that, and wish him all the best in his new role of improving the lives of many more around the world.
