William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American entrepreneur, software executive, philanthropist and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8% of the common stock.

What Gates says:

About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, 'how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?' The Seattle Weekly

Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority. It wasn't like somebody told me about it and I said, "I don't know how to spell that." I said, "Yeah, I've got that on my list, so I'm okay." But there came a point when we realized it was happening faster and was a much deeper phenomenon than had been recognized in our strategy. Speech at the University of Washington

Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that. Speech at the Computer History Museum

What people say about Gates

Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian cat away from being the villain in a James Bond movie. Dennis Miller

Bill Gates is a very rich man today ... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions. Dave Barry

It's a business I don't know anything about, but I admire Bill Gates enormously. I know him individually, and I think he's incredible in business. Warren Buffett

There never was a chip, it is said, that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features. James Coates, The Chicago Tribune

Probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age. Scott McNealy, of Sun Microsystems

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