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

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American software magnate, philanthropist, and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people 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, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts (see Criticism of Microsoft). In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates' last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

Microsoft
IBM partnership
In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000. Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system.They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.

Windows
Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board. Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences undermined the partnership. Gates distributed an internal memo on May 16, 1991, announcing that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would shift its efforts to the Windows NT kernel development.

Management style
From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it.As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.[33][34] He often interrupted presentations with such comments as, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced.When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."Gates's role at Microsoft for most of its history was primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100 line, but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy

Investments
Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, WA. bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates. Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.

William (Bill) H. Gates 是微軟公司主席和首席軟體設計師。微軟公司是為個人計算和商業計算提供軟體、服務和Internet技術的世界範圍內的領導者。在截止於2000年6月的上個財年，微軟公司收入達229.6億美元，在60個國家的雇員總數超過了44,000人。蓋茨出生於1955年10月28日，和兩個姐姐一塊在西雅圖長大。他的父親，William H. Gates II，是西雅圖的律師。他過世的母親，Mary Gates，是學校教師，華盛頓大學的董事以及United Way International的主席。蓋茨曾就讀於在西雅圖的公立小學和私立的湖濱中學。在那裡，他發現了他在軟體方面的興趣並且在13歲時開始了電腦程式設計。 1973年, 蓋茨考進了哈佛大學. 在那裡他和現在微軟的首席執行官史蒂夫·鮑爾默住在一起。在哈佛的時候，蓋茨為第一台微型電腦 – MITS Altair 開發了BASIC程式設計語言的一個版本。在大三的時候，蓋茨離開了哈佛並把全部精力投入到他與孩提時代的好友Paul Allen在1975年創建的微軟公司中。在電腦將成為每個家庭、每個辦公室中最重要的工具這樣信念的引導下，他們開始為個人電腦開發軟體。蓋茨的遠見卓識以及他對個人計算的先見之明成為微軟和軟體產業成功的關鍵。

在蓋茨的領導下，微軟持續地發展改進軟體技術，使軟體更加易用，更省錢和更富於樂趣。公司致力於長期的發展，從目前每財年超過40億美元的研究開發經費就可看出這一點。 1999 年, 蓋茨纂寫了《未來時速》一書，向人們展示了電腦技術是如何以嶄新的方式來解決商業問題的。這本書在超過60個國家以25種語言出版。《未來時速》贏得了廣泛的讚譽，並被紐約時報、今日美國、華爾街日報和Amazon.com列為暢銷書。蓋茨的上一本書，於1995年出版的《 The Road Ahead》（未來之路），曾經連續七周名列紐約時報暢銷書排行榜的榜首。蓋茨把兩本書的全部收入捐獻給了非贏利組織以支援利用科技進行教育和技能培訓。除了對電腦和軟體的熱愛之外，蓋茨對生物技術也很有興趣。他是ICOS公司的董事長，這是一家專注於蛋白質基體及小分子療法的公司。他也是很多其它生物技術公司的投資人。蓋茨還成立了Corbis公司, 它正在研究開發世界最大的可視資訊資源之一 – 來自於全球公共收藏和私人收藏的藝術及攝影作品綜合數位檔案。此外，蓋茨還和行動電話先鋒Craig McCaw 一起投資於Teledesic。這是一個雄心勃勃的計畫，計畫使用幾百個低軌道衛星來提供覆蓋全世界的雙向寬頻電訊服務。

對於蓋茨來說，慈善事業也是非常重要的。他和他的妻子Melinda已經捐贈了超過210億美元建立了一個基金，支持在全球醫療健康和知識學習領域的慈善事業，希望隨著人類進入21世紀，這些關鍵領域的科技進步能使全人類受益。到今天為止，蓋茨和他的妻子Melinda Gates 建立的基金已經將20多億美元用於了全球的健康事業，將5億多美元用於改善人們的學習條件，其中包括為蓋茨圖書館購置電腦設備、為美國和加拿大的低收入社區的公共圖書館提供Internet培訓和Internet訪問服務。此外將超過2億元用於西北太平洋地區的社區專案建設，將超過2900萬美元用在了一些特殊項目和每年的禮物發放活動上。蓋茨和Melinda French Gates 於1994年1月1日結婚。他們有兩個孩子：女兒Jennifer Katharine Gates，生於1996年; 兒子 Rory John Gates, 生於1999年。

蓋茨是一個熱心讀者，喜歡打高爾夫球和橋牌。