Bill Gates – The Road Ahead

The title in itself is a pun, because Bill Gates is the author of the book “The Road Ahead” in which he talks about technological advancements and I am using the same title for him, when he is on the verge of the end of his days at Microsoft.

This post is about the past, present and future of the man, who dramatically changed the way in which the Personal Computers were imagined. He revolutionized the concept of “Selling Software”, was the World’s Richest Man for almost 13 years in a row, with a net worth over $100 bn at his peak. With his fortune now around $57 bn, Bill Gates will now probably end up being the World’s Biggest Philanthropist.

The Journey so Far

Not exactly a rags-to-riches journey, but the life of William Henry Gates III, more popularly known as “Bill Gates” is nothing less than a fairytale in itself. Ever since his childhood, Bill was interested in computers and programming. He coded software for his school when he was 17 and also secured an admission at “Harvard” – one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States.

The tale after that is probably the one that would gather more interest, Bill became a drop-out from his college and then with Paul Allen, founded Microsoft. It was when a company called MITS invented the Altair, the first mass-produced microcomputer, in 1974, and advertised that they needed a programming language for it. Gates jumped at the chance, set up a meeting for him and Allen – and only then scrambled to invent something. They were hired, and their work formed the basis of Micro-soft, the company they founded the following year, with an impatient Gates dropping out of Harvard University to devote himself to the firm. He got the DOS from an in-famous company at around $50000 and made a killing by selling it. It was precisely at that time that Bill saw the future of Computing, a world where every desk has a computer system.

The story that followed needs no introduction, Microsoft followed the Proprietary Source code ownership model; because Bill believed that software piracy and copy would not result in quality software. He even wrote in an infamous letter, "Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market? Most of you steal your software. One thing you do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?"

There have been lot of other instances where fingers have been pointed against Microsoft and like every successful company, it has been garnered a lot of attention. One of the biggest was when Apple founder Steve Jobs fought Gates through the courts for years, claiming that Apple was the inventor of the style of graphical interface adopted by Windows. Apple was the pioneer, sure, but Microsoft prevailed in claiming there was no copyright infringement. Both men had borrowed off earlier pioneering companies, Gates claimed, firing back: "Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and take the stereo."
Various other trials based on stuff like shipping Internet Explorer alongwith the basic Operation System, which Bill Gates said resulted in seamless integration were raised as a concern against other startup corporations who were making browsers. The US ruling – stunningly – called for Microsoft to be broken apart, pulling Windows from the rest of the software business, but an appeal tempered the punishment.

Instead, Microsoft has been on a more-or-less bad-tempered probation in the US and Europe ever since. The European Union just this year fined it a record €899m for failing to comply with demands that it open up its source codes to other developers.

All said and done, whether you call it Monopoly or domination, today, Microsoft itself is worth $264bn, packing annual sales of $60bn.

The Future

Since 2006, Bill Gates had shown a desire to slowly reduce his work load and retire from the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. Last Friday, i.e. 28th June 2008, Bill retired from the company he founded in 1975. Though in the main title, the only change would be "non-executive chairman" instead of "executive chairman", but with this, he also retires from the “day-to-day” association with Microsoft.

So, is Mr. Gates going to retire completely, play golf and smell the roses at just 52 years of age? This statement may not be entirely true. Andrew Carnegie, the Steel Tycoon and in the 19th Century, the richest man in the World, said, “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.” He also followed this and donated most of his wealth to a lot of institutions and trusts, some of which have funds even today.

Apparently, Mr. Gates is going to follow Andrew Carnegie on the same path, with just the difference that unlike funds remaining in Carnegie’s name till now, Bill and Melinda have ensured that their donations are complete within 50 years of their death. Bill Gates has decided that, retiring now from Microsoft, he will spend the rest of his life, giving away the riches he amassed, back to the people. The mode of this transaction he chose is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was established in 2000 to bring together the couple's various charitable initiatives.

When Bill was at Microsoft, even there he made efforts to ensure that something good goes back to the society. In his speech at Stanford in February 2008, he said, “One of the best investments any company makes is in its research group and in the relationship its research group has with universities, Students have really been at the heart of a lot of breakthroughs.” Microsoft made its development tools available to students for free. I, myself, experienced this first hand in 2007, when Microsoft organized “Microsoft Academic Day” at Institute of Technology, Nirma University. I was a volunteer at the event and all the participants and the volunteers were presented with the latest Visual Studio and a Genuine Windows XP Professional CD. This apparently is a business practice, as it influences developers at grass-root level (students) to have a soft-corner towards Microsoft, but again, it is a win-win situation.

Coming back to the main point, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now got funds $ 37.3 bn, with almost $16.5 bn spent already. But this excludes a lot of funds pledged by Warren Buffet to this fund in 2006 and now the addition of Gates’ fortune to this fund is another feather in the cap. But with big money involved, there are a lot of issues being raised and the actions drawn into political controversies, the donations were either considered to be biased for some industries, or considered racist due to emphasis on people of certain ethnic background.


Final Take

There are troubled times for Microsoft now, due to increasing dominance of Google as the new World Leader. Microsoft has been futile against Google on the web-front,(ironically, I used Google to get all the images for the post, Picasa to collage them and am using Blogger to write my post) and though there is no real threat to Microsoft in its software market now, but sooner or later, Google’s dominance from Internet may shift to Operating Systems side as well. On the other hand, Apple is making a strong comeback as well. Some bearish analysts in the tech industry even wonder if there is any growth in the future for sclerotic old Microsoft – which took five years to bring out a new version of Windows that has turned out to be barely an improvement on the last version, and whose belated attempt to compete with iPod, the Microsoft Zune digital player, has disappeared without trace. The last thing that Microsoft needs right now, in these uncertain times, is for its visionary founder to walk off the set entirely.

And on the other front, many people believe that Bill Gates should not take up the responsibility of charity himself. The market disciplines that have made Microsoft a world leader, some complain, just cannot be applied to charitable work and Bill will have a tough time learning to be persistent, tolerant and understanding enough to ensure the charity work goes fine.

Considering what the experts say, both Bill Gates, and his babies, “Microsoft” and “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” will have they will now have to face great challenges.

In the end, I will to sign off this post wishing that, with his Foundation, Mr. Bill opens the flood-GATES of opportunities for a huge number of people, and brightens their lives opening a lot many WINDOWS of Hope.