Bill Gates Speaks

I recommend this book, Bill Gates Speaks, to the readers. I admire him not only because he is the world’s richest man for more than a decade, but also the greatest philanthropist of the century.



If people ask me who my idol is, I would say I’ll never have idol, because I am a Christian. I really appreciate Gates for his contribution to the world. Gates once expressed the hope that each home has at least one computer, and his wish came true.

The retirement of Bill Gates reminds me of the end of the Lord of the Rings. It seems to have happened about eight times. I remember him announcing stepping down as CEO, stepping down as Chief Software Architect, announcing his retirement, doing his last CES, doing his final developers keynote, doing his wacky retirement video, announcing his retirement date and now, finally it seems, actually leaving (except he’s still doing one day per week at Microsoft).




Gates is the standard by which all other technology entrepreneurs will be measured. No doubt there were better coders than him but there is no better strategist. Even though Apple saw the potential of Xerox PARC’s Graphical User Interface first it was Gates who recognised hardware didn’t matter and staked his entire company on that insight. And won.

Even his fiercest critics acknowledge the debt owed to MS. By creating a common OS platform for other developers to build on MS made the personal computer accessible and help laid the foundation for the explosion of the Internet. Yes MS engaged in some rather fruity behaviour down the years but even now, with their power on the wane, we must admit we are better off with them than without.

These days those insights are as sharp as ever. It was Gates who put in train the company’s greatest innovation – the Xbox – and with it the one genuinely distinctive product, Xbox live. In 2003 he predicted the computerless home in an article which I have not seen bettered for its brevity and insight. And now instead of wasting his money on yachts he is giving it away to promote education and combat disease. If he does to malaria what he did to Netscape the world will be a better place.