An Emotional Close to Bill Gates’ Window at Microsoft

Bill Gates bid a teary farewell to Microsoft on Friday, as he left his full-time executive job for the world's richest philanthropy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Merely 52, the once richest man wants to consider all his concerns for charity now.

Gates will still remain the chairman and largest shareholder of Microsoft, which he founded with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975. With a dream of placing a computer on a desk in every home, Gates continued with his endeavors, taking Microsoft to heights and bringing about a revolution in the PC market.

As PC clones emerged, Microsoft lent its operating system to them with a result that blockbuster products like windows and offices run on more than 90 per cent of the world’s computers. Millions around the globe depend on them for their everyday activities.

It was Gates’ vision of three decades which gave us what most of us deem vital today. He wanted to popularize the computer and successfully accomplished it but Microsoft did not grasp the eminence of the internet that fast.

With more than $100 billion in 1999 and subsequently swelling Bank Balance, Gates remained the wealthiest person on the planet for years before he decided to contribute to the betterment of global health and education and started donating huge chunks of his fortune to charity.

Bill Gates entered Harvard in 1973 aged 18 but dropped out mid-way to enter the world of technology.

His early experiences with computers and the appearance of chips probably made him envision an era of personal computing convinced him to take a leave of absence, in effect give up college education, and start a software company.

Gates will still spend one day a week at the company but it will be up to his successors, led by Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive, to take over the challenges of the Internet and raise standards accordingly or watch Microsoft’s wealth and stature in the industry steadily wear away. “Bill’s legacy is Windows and Office, and that will be a rich franchise for years to come, but it’s not the future,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School.

When he was a Harvard undergraduate, Gates was displeased to see that so many of his fellow students pursued a “narrow track for success” instead of being willing to “take big risks to do big things,” recalled Michael Katz, a Harvard contemporary who is now a professor at New York University.

In a Harvard Business School case study, published in 1994, Gates spoke of Microsoft’s strategy in terms of network effects and technology standards that, combined, enabled the company to command markets. “We look for businesses where we can garner large market shares, not just 30 or 35 percent,” he said.

It was this wide-ranging visualization of Bill Gates that took Microsoft to where it stands today. As he steps down from Microsoft, Gates leaves his legacy bundled with an inspiration for all of us to believe in our dreams and watch where they can take us.

No wonder, his voice cracked with emotion as he delivered his farewell speech at Microsoft. Both Gates and Ballmer struggled to hold it together when the now CEO presented Gates with a farewell gift: scrapbook of photos and memories.

“There won't be a day when I'm not thinking about Microsoft and the great thing that it's doing, and... wanting to help,” said Gates in his farewell speech to a gathering of some 800 employees.