Biografi Bill Gates Bahasa Inggris

                             Bill Gates

     William Henry Gates III or who well-know as Bill Gates was born in 1955 in Seattle, Washington. He is an American business executive, who serves as chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the leading computer software company in the United States. He attended public school through the sixth grade. In the seventh grade he entered Seattle's exclusive Lakeside School, where he met his best friend Paul Allen. They cofounded Microsoft in 1975.

     In 1980 Microsoft closed a pivotal deal with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) to provide the operating system for the IBM PC personal computer. In 1986 Microsoft offered its stock to the public; by 1987 rapid appreciation of the stock had made Gates, 31, the youngest ever self-made billionaire. 

     In 1989 he founded Corbis Corporation, which now owns the largest collection of digital images in the world. In the 1990s, as Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office application software achieved worldwide market dominance, Gates amassed a fortune worth tens of billions of dollars.

     In the late 1990s, with his wife he established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which, ranked by assets, quickly became the largest foundation in the world. Gates has also authored two books: The Road Ahead (1995; revised, 1996), which details his vision of technology's role in society and Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999), which discusses the role technology can play in running a business. 

     In 1998 Gates appointed an executive vice president of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, to the position of president, but Gates continued to serve as Microsoft's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). In 2000 Gates transferred the title of CEO to Ballmer. While remaining chairman, Gates also took on the title of chief software architect to focus on the development of new product and technologies.

     In June 2006 Gates announced that he would begin transitioning from a full-time role at Microsoft to a full-time role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He relinquished his title of chief software architect to Ray Ozzie, a veteran leader in computer technology and creator of Lotus Notes. Gates planned to remain chairman of Microsoft and to continue as its largest shareholder, but the said that by July 2008 he would have only a part-time role at the company he cofounded.