Bill Gates is one of the most influential people in the world. He is cofounder of one of the most recognized brands in the computer industry with nearly every desk top computer using at least one software program from Microsoft. According to the Forbes magazine, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and has held the number one position for many years.
Gates was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington USA. His father, William H. Gates II was a Seattle attorney and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates was a school teacher and chairperson of the United Way charity. Gates and his two sisters had a comfortable upbringing, with Gates being able to attend the exclusive secondary "Lakeside School".
Bill Gates started studying at Harvard University in 1973 where he spent time with Paul Allen. Gates and Allen worked on a version of the programming language BASIC, that was the basis for the MITS Altair (the first microcomputer available). He did not go on to graduate from Harvard University as he left in his junior year to start what was to become the largest computer software company in the world; Microsoft Corporation.
Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation
"To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential." Microsoft Mission Statement
After dropping out of Harvard Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen set about revolutionizing the computer industry. Gates believed there should be a computer on every office desk and in every home.
In 1975 the company Micro-soft was formed, which was an abbreviation of microcomputer software. It soon became simply "Microsoft"® and went on to completely change the way people use computers.
Microsoft helped to make the computer easier to use with its developed and purchased software, and made it a commercial success. The success of Microsoft began with the MS-DOS computer operating system that Gates licensed to IBM. Gates also set about protecting the royalties that he could acquire from computer software by aggressively fighting against all forms of software piracy, effectively creating the retail software market that now exists today. This move was quite controversial at the time as it was the freedom of sharing that produced much innovation and advances in the newly forming software industry. But it was this stand against software piracy, that was to be central in the great commercial success that Microsoft went on to achieve.
Bill Gates retired as Microsoft CEO in 2008.
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Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular social networking site Facebook Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook with fellow classmates Dustin Moskovits ,Eduardo Saverin , and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard. He is currently one of the youngest billionaires in the world with personal wealth of US$4 billion in 2010.
Early life
Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York to a Jewish family and raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He started programming when he was in middle school. Early on, Zuckerberg enjoyed developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. Before attending Phillips Exeter Academy, Mark went to school at Ardsley High School. “At high school, he excelled in the classics. He transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy where he immersed himself in Latin. He also built a program to help the workers in his father's office communicate; he built a version of the game Risk and a music player named Synapse that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he decided to attend Harvard University instead, where he joined Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad.