Retire At 52

How many of us can do what this guy has accomplished? Retiring at the ripe young age of 52 with a hundred or so billion dollars at his disposal is probably just a dream for most of us in this planet but this guy has made his mark in history.

The head of the so called “Evil Empire” is finally retiring at age 52. If you still haven’t got a clue to which person I’m referring to, it’s non other than the gazillionaire Bill Gates of Microsoft. Not bad for a Harvard dropout. He has been on the top 10 billionaire list for the past years and continues to do so.

Now that he’s retired, he will now focus his attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A foundation he spearheaded to help worldwide poverty, education and global health. Well, we can really benefit from the foundation, how ‘bout sending me a few millions in my bank account for starters? My account number is …….

Going back to year 1975, together with his school mate Paul Allen, they started their very first company with just 11 employees. Their main focus at that time was to produce software that would run in every PC, in every home. “Windows” was eventually created with that idea. From then on to the present, the OS is still being used in about 90% of PCs in the world.

Although they found success with their endeavor, in the late 90’s they also incurred the ire of the Justice Department and charged Microsoft with engaging in anticompetitive and exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly in personal computer operating systems and to extend that monopoly to Internet browsing software. It was a long lasting battle, but since Microsoft had more than enough financial resources at their disposal, they opted to just settle the cases which got them off the hook legally.

Microsoft’s position today is not as big as it was prior to the internet. They were late in jumping into the net bandwagon in the mid 90’s that’s why Microsoft lags behind Yahoo and Google in the search engine market battle. Its latest OS version, Vista, isn’t doing any better than its predecessor, Windows XP. One reason is that the OS has become too large to accommodate the ever growing capacity needs of current hardware in the market. They might need to overhaul the entire code or might as well start with a new one from scratch to make it more adaptable to newer technology.

Be that as it may, don’t put Microsoft down and out as yet. They might come out with a big surprise in the near future. Microsoft is aiming its guns now on “cloud computing”. If you’re not familiar with the term, I wrote about it a month ago – “Cloud computing, what’s it all about…..” This area is where breaking new grounds could also bring in big profits for anyone landing on top of the heap.

In the meantime, Bill Gates is now headed on a new journey as a philanthropist with his foundation - from the head of the “Evil Empire” to the “Giving Empire”? Hmmm…. Maybe I can end this post with the slogan – “Where do you want to go today?”

Resources:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91912859
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/technology/27soft.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

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Retire At 52