Bill Gates and Microsoft
"Microsoft was founded based on my vision of a personal computer on every desk and in every home, all running Microsoft software," Bill Gates once remarked (Stevenson). Everyone has their own dream but this was Bill Gates dream when he first co-founded Microsoft. This dream came to haunt him 12 years later when he was caught. Microsoft was charged with using its power to eliminate its competitor in the Web-browser market in the mid-90s (Stevenson). Bill Gates’ dreams and passions lead him to try to monopolize the computer industry using Microsoft and the antitrust lawsuit that followed.
The early life of Gates got him interested in computers. Bill Gates was the son of William Henry Gates III and Mary Maxwell. Gates came from a wealthy family of considerable social standing. Gates attended public school until his parents enrolled him in the exclusive Lakeside preparatory school at the age of 12 (“Bill Gates”). While attending this school he got interested in computers. The first computer that Gates used was at this school. The computer was a room-sized machine (Stevenson). Gates and his friends would neglect their studies to spend more time exploring the computer (“Bill Gates”). They were all eventually banned from the school’s computer room until they formed the Lakeside Programmers Group in 1968 (Stevenson). When Gates was 17-years-old, he wrote his first program. This program was a timetabling system for the school and he earned $4,200 from it (“Bill Gates”). After high school
Gates went to Harvard to become a lawyer to follow in his father footstep. At least that was what his parents wanted (Stevenson). While at Harvard, Gates and his friend Paul Allen wrote the first computer language program written for a personal computer (“Bill Gates”). They also wrote scheduling programs for their school and as well as program that analyzed traffic data (Stevenson).
Microsoft was founded base on a dream that Gates had. Gates dropped out of Harvard just to pursue his dream (Stevenson). Gates and his friend Allen co-founded Microsoft a year after they dropped out of Harvard, when they were hired to adapt the BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language for use on the Altair. They were contracted to work as programmers at MITS headquarters in New Mexico (Stevenson).
At just twenty years old, Bill Gates cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. He is now the richest man in the world with over $85.2 billion to his name. So why did Microsoft end up being way more successful than any computer program like it? The answer is because of the free enterprise system, and competition. Gate's product was considered new and innovative at the time, which made customers want to try it out.
Microsoft was once a small software business ran by a young Bill Gates in a tiny
Two friends named Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque. They started out with a small company and turned into an empire that employs 100,932 people (as of December of 2013). Before there was Microsoft there was Traf-O-Data, which kept track of traffic data, which at that time was groundbreaking. Microsoft is now a multibillion-dollar company and is a household name. Microsoft has now expanded to selling many different, successful products. Some of their very popular products include Skype, Xbox, the Surface tablet and Bing. Microsoft has 1.5 billion dollar revenue. Even though Microsoft had market dominance at one...
Bill Gates, the younger of the two was 15, born in Washington to two relatively successful parents Bill H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxell Gates. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother served on the board of directors at two major companies. At an early age Bill showed signs of great leadership qualities and later proved these true, he excelled in school and always brought a competitive fire to everything which usually was mistaken for anger and stubbornness.Bill was considered a genius; He made a 1590 on his SAT, devised an algorithm for pancake sorting for unsolved problems that was published and applied to modern formulas, and later Bill enrolled in Harvard. Bill graduated in 1973 and was off to Harvard. While at Harvard, Gates majored in law, with plans in following his dad’s ...
The William H. Gates foundation was started in 1994 and was operated by Bill’s dad. Paul came back to Microsoft and Bill and Paul donated to their old school, Lakeside private school. They created a auditorium in the school named after their old friend, Kent Evans. In 1995, Microsoft started adding the internet to their future plans. They created a web browser called Internet Explorer and launched a network for the internet called MSN. Along with this, Windows 95 was also released that same year.
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft has always focused on software but the types of devices have changed over time. Initially Microsoft’s software was developed primarily for desktop computers and this continued until the mid-2000s when computers shifted from desktop computing to mobile devices (mainly laptops). In 2011 Microsoft started rebranding the company to fit en even more mobile market. They previewed their Windows 8 operating system with a focus on touch screen devices with different touch screen form factors. Microsoft also entered into the hardware business with the creation of its Surface tablet in 2012. Microsoft has always had a big impact in the commercial market providing many different software packages including: Windows, Windows Server pr...
Technology changes rapidly everyday and the computer industry is a tough frontrunner in technology. There is so much competition going on out there in world, and to compete with everyone you must step ahead from others. Microsoft have demonstrated that how dedicated they are in evolving computer program by always being one step ahead from others. Microsoft’s greatest power is to build the superlative computer software than others. Today, Microsoft is one of the most successful companies not in United States but in the world. The success of the company can be described in one of the quotes of Bill Gates, “I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.”
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." -Bill Gates (Bill 1). Microsoft Windows, as of October 2013, is used by approximately 85 percent of all laptops and desktops worldwide (StatCounter 1). The Windows operating system is the pride and joy of the programmer, inventor, and co-founder of Microsoft, William Henry Gates III. His impact on the world has been astronomical resulting in many advancements in science and technology that just wouldn’t have been possible without him. In order to fully understand his significance and influence in the world, one must be knowledgeable of his background, the critics view of his most famous achievement, and must have a discussion about his impact and importance in the modern world.
This was the same year when Bill Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft. In 1981, Bill Gates’ company was hired to develop an operating system but rather than creating a new operating system they decided to buy a preexisting operation system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for the amount of 50,000 dollars. After modifying the operating system they bought, they renamed the operating system to MS-DOS. After MS-DOS began selling it brought in a steady income for Gates due to the fact that the PC market was growing and there weren’t many competitors in the market for them to compete with. In 1986, when Microsoft Corporation went public, it made Gates into a millionaire overnight. The following year, Microsoft released their first ever version of
Steve Jobs wasn’t always a computer whiz; he developed it over the course of his childhood. Born on February 24, 1955, Jobs was put up for adoption by University of Wisconsin students. He was then adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs where he grew up in Mountain View, California. His father was a machinist for Spectra Physics, and his mother was an accountant (American Decades 1). Initially bored with school, Jobs developed his first real interest in technology when he visited the Hewlett-Packard plant in Palo Alto on a school field trip in high school where he had his first encounter with a desk-top computer. After getting assistance from the cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, William Hewlett, on a school project, Jobs got a summer job at the plant. There he met future cofounder of Apple Inc., Steve Wozniak. They started working on pr...
After completing their second year of college Gates and Allen had decided to make their own software company. They started out with Micro-Soft as the first name of the company but later took the hyphen. Gates had soon went back to school at harvard however he dropped out in 1977 before he graduated. On his time out he soon devoted himself to Microsoft and made it his full-time Job. This would help him find the problems and fix them. It would make the company a lot stronger and better. “In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, two young computer hobbyists from Palo Alto, California, unveiled the prototype for the Apple 1 computer. A local computer dealer saw the Apple 1 and ordered 100 pre-assembled units. Over the next 10 months, about 200 Apple 1’s were sold.” (Musolf).
Microsoft’s mission of placing a “PC running Microsoft software on every desk and in every home” drove their overall strategy early on. Depending on the business segment within Microsoft, one would see in place very different business models as the strategy for each line of business could vary. In the operating system (OS) segment, Microsoft initially brought in an existing product and modified this (MS-DOS) to work with the Intel microprocessor, which were the “brains” of the IBM PC. Microsoft partnered with IBM to provide the operating system for the IBM PC. In addition to developing Windows, Microsoft during this period was working to write applications for the Apple OS.
Bill was born on October 28th, 1955 his parents are William H. Gates Sr and Mary Maxwell Gates. Since he was a child he was interested in computers. “His education started at a local private school known for tough academic standards. When he was first introduced to computers he would skip class to work with the machine. After getting in trouble he gave up computers to focus on education for a year. He dropped out of harvard after his sophomore year because of his success with computers”(Mcguire 1). He was so interested in computers he dropped out of Harvard one of the best schools in America to pursue computers. Due to all of Gates knowledge on computers he was easily able to get a job “Gates' first professional job came soon after he and his computer friends wrote The Problem Report Book, a 300-page manual they compiled after going through the garbage bins of Seattle's Computer Center Corporation (CCC) and finding all the programmers' errors. CCC officials were so impressed with the boys that they gave them jobs”(Mcguire 1). Gates was easily able to get a job by just finding errors in a computer software because of how much he knew about computers. Bill Gates past knowledge of computers helped him become who he is
It was at Lakeside that he was first introduced to computers. In the spring of 1968 the Lakeside Prep School concluded that it should acquaint the student body with the world of computers. They were still too large and costly for the school to purchase it's own, so instead they had a fund raiser and bought computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. A few thousand dollars were raised which the school figured would buy more than enough time to last into the next school year. But they had drastically underestimated the amount of students that would be addicted to this machine.
Microsoft is the leading and the largest Software Company in the world. Found by William Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 Microsoft has grown and become a multibillion company in only ten years. It all started with a great vision – “a computer on every desk and every home” - that seemed almost impossible at the time. Now Microsoft has over 44,000 employees in 60 countries, net income of $3.45 billion and revenue of 11.36 billion. Company dramatic growth and success was driven by development and marketing of operational systems and personal productivity applications software.