Microsoft Founders- Bill Gates - Richest Man in the World

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MICROSOFT FOUNDERS ---- Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steven Ballmer -- all Billionaires today

According to Forbes Magazines, Bill Gate  is listed as the No. 1 richest man in USA and the World as of  2007.  He is also a Philantropist.
Source:  Wikipedia, Microsoft.com


Bill Gates---- how he looks TODAY


Bill Gates on the cover of the April 16, 1984 issue of TIME magazine, balancing a 5¼-inch floppy disk on his pointer finger.

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8% of the common stock.[3] Forbes magazine's list of The World's Billionaires has ranked him as the richest person in the world since 1995, and recent estimates put his net worth near $56 billion.[2] When family wealth is considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family.( Owner of Wal-Mart Dept.Store


William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Jr. (now Sr.) and Mary Maxwell Gates. His family was wealthy; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate Bank and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix.


Gates married Melinda French of Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). Bill Gates' house is one of the most expensive houses in the world, and is a modern 21st century earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. According to King County public records, as of 2006, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is just under $1 million. Also among Gates' private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for USD $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.[45]


Gates has been number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 through to 2006 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" from 1995 to 2006 with around 50 billion U.S. dollars. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $100 billion causing him to be referred to in the media as a "centibillionaire".[48] Since 2000 the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates said in an interview that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world, stating that he disliked the attention it brought.


In 2000, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization, with his wife
The foundation's grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in third world countries, and other causes. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities from 2000 onwards. These donations are usually cited as sparking a substantial change in attitudes towards philanthropy among the very rich, with philanthropy becoming the norm.[51]



1977 - Bill police mug shot for speeding offence ---- it shows that he was  a normal kid who likes to drive their car fast.

According to a press inquiry, Bill Gates stated that he scored 1590 on his SATs.[16] He enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973 intending to get a pre-law degree,[17] but did not have a definite study plan.[18] While at Harvard, he met his future business partner, Steven Ballmer
Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.


Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.
In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair.
In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates' foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

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Paul Allen - Co-founder of Microsoft --- the 5th richest American in America


1981 --- Bill and Paul Allen --- typical dot.com computer geeks


Paul Allen ----This is how he looks TODAY


Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953 in Seattle, Washington) is an American entrepreneur who formed Microsoft with Bill Gates. He regularly appears on lists of the richest people in the world; as of 2007 Forbes ranks him the fifth richest American [1], worth an estimated $18.0 billion. He is the Chairman of Charter Communications, but he is no longer a shareholder in Dreamworks Animation. He was recently invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Allen also owns two professional sports teams: The Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association.
He currently resides in Mercer Island, Washington.


Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle, Washington to parents Kenneth S. Allen, an associate director of the University of Washington libraries, and Faye G. Allen, in 1953. Allen attended Lakeside School, a prestigious private school in Seattle, and befriended Gates, who was two years his junior but shared a common enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakeside's teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several timesharing computer systems. After graduation, Allen attended Washington State University, and was an active member in Phi Kappa Theta Fraternity, though he dropped out after two years to go and work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, which placed him near his old friend again. He later convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft. Allen was a model student in his years at Lakeside School. He also liked to do things with computers.


With Bill Gates, he co-founded Microsoft (initially "Micro-Soft") in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975, and began selling a BASIC programming language interpreter. In 1980, Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to buy an operating system called QDOS for $50,000. Due to IBM deadlines, Gates and Allen felt that they didn't have enough time to develop an operating system from scratch; they therefore purchased the fully functional QDOS and reworked the code to fit IBM's needs. Microsoft won a contract to supply the finished program for use as the operating system of IBM's new PC. This became a foundation of Microsoft's growth.
Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, which was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant

In November 2000, Allen resigned from his position on the Microsoft board but was asked to consult as a senior strategy advisor to the company's executives. He put even more distance between himself and Microsoft, selling 68 million shares of Microsoft. He still owned a reported 138 million shares.

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Steven Ballmer ---- the 31st Richest person in the world.  Current CEO of Microsoft Corp



Steven Ballmer --- how he looks TODAY


Steven Anthony Ballmer (born March 24, 1956 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American businessman and has been the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000. Ballmer is the first person to become a billionaire (in U.S. dollars) based on stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. In its "2007 World's Richest People" ranking, Forbes magazine ranked Ballmer as the 31st richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $15 billion.
After graduating from Harvard with degrees in mathematics and economics, Ballmer worked for two years at Procter & Gamble as an assistant product manager before enrolling in Stanford Graduate School of Business to get a Master of Business Administration degree. He dropped out of Stanford a year later when Gates persuaded him to work at Microsoft. Ballmer became Microsoft's 24th employee on June 11, 1980, the first business manager hired by Gates. He was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8% of the company.


Ballmer has headed several divisions within Microsoft, including Operating Systems Development, Operations, and Sales and Support. In July 1998, he was promoted to president, and on January 13, 2000, he was named chief executive officer when Gates stepped down from that position.
While Gates retains control of technological vision, Ballmer handles company finances. In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3% of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4% stake in the company. The same year, Ballmer replaced Microsoft's employee stock options program, which had been instrumental in making early employees millionaires, with a stock grant program.[1]


Ballmer is currently the longest-serving employee of Microsoft after Gates. Ballmer married Connie Snyder (a Microsoft employee) and has three children. His wife is an aunt of former major league baseball player Ben Petrick.

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                       MICROSOFT CORPORATION           


Microsoft Headquarter/Corporate Office in Redmond, Washington -- this is one of the many buildings in the huge building complex.


1978 - the original Microsoft Team headed by Bill Gates
Microsoft staff photo from Dec 7, 1978. From left to right:
Top: Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, Jim Lane.
Middle: Bob O'Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin.
Bottom: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen

Microsoft Corporation, is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44.28 billion and 76,000 employees in 102 countries. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its best selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. The company's name is sometimes abbreviated as MS or MSFT.
In the mid-90s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. On August 24, 1995, it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL. MSN became an umbrella service for Microsoft's online services

On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft, calling the company an "abusive monopoly" and forcing the company to split into two separate units. Part of this ruling was later overturned by a federal appeals court, and eventually settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001.


Windows logo


Windows logo slogan----- " Microsoft, your potential. Our Passion "
The current logo of Microsoft Windows, one of the company's best-known products.

This division produces Microsoft's flagship product, the Windows operating system. It has been produced in many versions, including Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 server, Windows Me, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. Almost all IBM compatible personal computers designed for the consumer come with Windows preinstalled. The current desktop version of Windows is Windows Vista. The online service MSN, the cable television station MSNBC, and the Microsoft online magazine Slate are all part of this division.

Microsoft.com
Microsoft.com is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, receiving more than 100 million hits per day. According to Alexa.com, Microsoft.com is ranked 13th amongst all websites for Traffic Rank as on March 30, 2007.[88] This is however at least partly attributed to the default settings of Internet Explorer, which sets the initial homepage of Internet Explorer to Microsoft.com.

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Note: Bill Gates donates computers to all schools and libraries in USA . Children from the early grades uses computers in their classroom.  You can go to the libraries to use the computer, it is free, no charge, as long as you have a library card,

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A. Top Billionaires 2007  reported by Forbes
This is an annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people compiled and published by Forbes magazine in March 2007.

# Name Net Worth Citizenship Source

1 Bill Gates US$56.0 billion United States Microsoft

11 Lawrence Ellison US$21.5 billion United States Oracle Corporation

19 Paul Allen US$18.0 billion United States Microsoft

26 Sergey Brin US$16.6 billion United States Google

26 Larry Page US$16.6 billion United States Google

30 Michael Dell US$15.8 billion United States Dell

31 Steven Ballmer US$15.0 billion United States Microsoft

132 Steven Jobs US$5.7 billion United States Apple Computers

369= David Filo US$2.5 billion United States Yahoo!

432= Jerry Yang US$2.2 billion United States Yahoo!


High Tech Computer Companies Founders such as Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, Google are the Richest men in the World & America

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New Survey from Forbes Magazine as of September 2007
Bill Gates maintain the lead as the number one richest man in USA and the World


Top Ten Richest Americans in USA as of Sept 2007 - Forbes Magazine
William Gates III ---Microsoft
Warren Buffett
Sheldon Adelson
Lawrence Ellison --- Oracle
Sergey Brin  ----------Google
Larry Page ------------Google
Kirk Kerkorian
Michael Dell ---------Dell Computers
Charles Koch
David Koch

Top Ten World Billionaires  - Sept 2007 - Forbes Magazine
William Gates III ----- USA
Warren Buffett -------USA
Carlos Slim Helú -----Mexico
Ingvar Kamprad ------Switzerland
Lakshmi Mittal--------United Kingdom
Sheldon Adelson ------USA
Bernard Arnault -------France
Amancio Ortega--------Spain
Li Ka-shing ------------ Hongkong
David Thomson --------Canada



This Month of Sept. 2007, Forbes Magazines survey still says that  -------- Bill Gates is still the world,s richest man……He is so rich . He has so much money……..he can never spend it all until he dies…………..anyway….he donates millions to charities & school organizations…..He is a great giver or philantrophist.  He and his wife has their own Charity Foundation.

.I wish he can donate a million to ME….I will help him spend his money……..just kidding….he,he,he,he….!!!!!   

[micro]

ang yayaman naman ng mga yan ..

[-JaJa-]

sana magshare naman cla ng kayamanan nila. hehehe