Bill Gates 2 Essay, Research Paper

Bill Gates

What does it take to be the richest man? It is obvious that you don t need to be extremely attractive or even good looking at all. You only have to have a great idea, you have to be an obsessive workaholic, and you have to be willing to beat and crush all of your competitors. Also being a genius, and being in the right place at the right time may help too. Someone that has seemed to accomplish all of these is now the Chief Executive Officer of the Microsoft Corporation and goes by the name of Bill Gates. He currently worth more than 100 billion dollars and is the most wealthy man in the world. There are many people who admire and respect him, and then there are many that hate and despise him. Either way he has managed to develop and successfully operate one of the worlds largest software manufacturers, Microsoft. Microsoft is so successful, and has such control over the computer industry that the U.S. government is filing a lawsuit accusing claiming a monopoly. How did Bill get himself into this and where he is now? Is it possible he has made too much money and has too much power? You can decide after reading this.

William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955 in the Seattle suburbs of Washington. He grew up with his two sisters in a family of descent wealth, his father William Gates Jr. a Seattle attorney, and his mother Mary Gates, a school teacher, University of Washington regent and chairwomen of The United Way International. Gates attended public elementary school in Seattle before moving on to the private Lakeside school in North Seattle. There he began cutting classes to hang out at all hours at his schools computer center. He liked computers and learned so much that he began programming them at age 13. Throughout his early teens he and his friend Paul Allen were writing computer programs working on ways to start a business. At 16 they sold a computer-runned system to monitor highway traffic, and made around 20,000 dollars off it, but business ended when the customers found out the young entrepreneurs were still attending high school. After successfully graduating high school, Gates wasn t quiet sure what to do next. He decided to attend Harvard with no specific career goal in mind. While going to Harvard he was your average smart college student with a special interest in the Popular Electronic magazine. While reading an issue in 1975, he found an article on the first commercially available microcomputer, the Altair 8800. This was a turning point for Bill, which caused him to enter the computer industry. He and his computer buddy Allen decided to adapt a computer language for the Altair. When it worked 21 year old Gates dropped out of Harvard University to focus more attention on his new dream, computer software. Realizing he couldn t take on such a task by himself, he and Allen formed a partnership and called it Microsoft, not knowing that in 20 sum years they would be billionaires. They started out by selling computer software to many of the new computer manufacturers starting in the computer industry themselves. Microsoft started growing but wasn t that popular until computer giant IBM asked the two to develop an operating system for its new personal computer, otherwise known as the PC. Gates and Allen like everything else, took this particular job seriously and were determined to produce a quality product, and they did just that. They developed what is called MS-DOS, or Microsoft Disk Operating System. IBM was very pleased and they quickly incorporated it into all their personal computers. From there Microsoft grew rapidly in popularity and in production. By 1986 Microsoft was a globally recognized company, and Mr. Bill Gates was a 31 year old Billionaire.