Bill Gates to leave Microsoft on June 27

San Fransico, Jun 27: Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and driving force in the company is set to leave the company on Friday, June 27. However Gates, 52, remains chairman of the Microsoft board of directors and the company's largest shareholder. Gates is the world's third richest man.

Born in Seattle, Washington Gates enrolled at Harvard College in 1973, where he met Steve Ballmer, who is the present CEO of Microsoft. Microsoft which Gates formed along with Paul Allen now employs more than 80,000 people across over 100 hundred countries.

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems and provided them with the Altair BASIC, and thus Microsoft was formed. This led to a partnership with IBM that required Microsoft to make the BASIC interpreter for the IBM PC. Later on, Gates struck another deal with IBM, allowing them to package Microsoft's PC-DOS software with IBM's personal computers in exchange for a fee paid to Microsoft for every computer sold. This deal established Microsoft as a major player in the software industry.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He also heads the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000 which is in to Philantrophic activites.

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