American mogul Bill Gates, "world's wealthiest man," is now a philanthropist

Bill Gates at CES 2007
Originally uploaded by Domain Barnyard

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955)[2] is an American business magnate, philanthropist, and chairman[3] of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is ranked consistently one of the world's wealthiest people[4] and the wealthiest overall as of 2009, says Wikipedia.[1]

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.[5] 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).[6][7] 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.

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.[8]

Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, (a suburb of Seattle) its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and Microsoft Office (Word, Powerpoint, etc).