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William Henry "Bill" Gates III - American business magnate, entrepreneur, philanthropist, investor, and programmer. In 1975, Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has authored and co-authored several books.
Childhood and Education
Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. He is the son of William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. Gates' ancestral origin includes English, German, and Irish, Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix. Early on in his life, Gates's parents had a law career in mind for him. When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that "it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock ... there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing".
At 13, he enrolled in the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine." After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students – Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans – for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.
At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in Cobol, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with "a disproportionate number of interesting girls." He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success." At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973, and was a National Merit Scholar. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who would later succeed Gates as CEO of Microsoft.
In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates's solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years; its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.
Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.
Microsoft
After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and by doing so the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington, on January 1, 1979.
During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.
IBM partnership
IBM approached Microsoft in July 1980, regarding its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. The computer company first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later, Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000.
Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system. They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry. Despite IBM's name on the operating system the press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the new computer. PC Magazine asked if Gates were "the man behind the machine?", and InfoWorld quoted an expert as stating "it's Gates' computer". Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates, the president of Microsoft and its board chairman.
Windows
Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences caused the partnership to deteriorate.
Management style
From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it. He gained a reputation for being distant to others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls." Another executive recalled that after he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times, when they met again a month later Gates "won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor."
As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. He interrupted presentations with such comments "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."
Gates was an active software developer in Microsoft's early history, particularly on the company's programming language products, but his role most of its history was primarily as management and executive. Gates has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products. He remained interested in technical details; Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1985 that when watching Gates announcing Microsoft Excel, "Something else impressed me. Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack." On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.
Antitrust litigation
Many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gates's approval. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as, "compete", "concerned", and "we". The judge and other observers in the court room were seen laughing at various points during the deposition. BusinessWeek reported:
Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall,' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Gates both sent and received.
Gates later said he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said, "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree." Despite Gates' denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, and blocking competition, both in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Appearance in ads
Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977, for a traffic violation. As they are walking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after getting a "Yes", he then asks if they are working on a way to make computers edible, again getting a "Yes". Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's own show about "nothing" (Seinfeld). In a second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people.
Personal life
After being named one of Good Housekeeping's "50 Most Eligible Bachelors" in 1985, Gates married Melinda French in Hawaii on January 1, 1994. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine (born 1996), Rory John (born 1999), and Phoebe Adele (born 2002). The family resides in the Gates' home, an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to 2007 King County public records, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000. The 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500 sq ft (230 m) gym and a 1,000 sq ft (93 m) dining room.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates stated in regard to his faith:
The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.
In the same interview, Gates said: "I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view [laughs]. I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know."
Among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994. Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.
Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007, and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call Gates a "centibillionaire". Despite his wealth and extensive business travel Gates usually flew coach until 1997, when he bought a private jet. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multibillion-dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person behind Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List. Carlos Slim retook the position again in June 2014 (but then lost the top position back to Gates).
Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004, he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett. In 2016 he revealed that he was color blind when discussing his gaming habits.
Philanthropy
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994, sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the "William H. Gates Foundation." In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion. The Foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.
The foundation is organized into four program areas: Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division, and Global Policy & Advocacy Division.
Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity; the couple plan to eventually donate 95 percent of their wealth to charity.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the use of genetically modified organisms in agricultural development. Specifically, the foundation is supporting the International Rice Research Institute in developing Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant used to combat Vitamin A deficiency.
Gates's wife suggested people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in The Power of Half. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed a commitment they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge." The pledge is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth over the course of time to charity.
Gates has recently expressed concern about the existential threats of Superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that
First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.
In a March 2015 interview, with Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, Gates claimed he would "highly recommend" Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.
Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building" that was designed by architect Frank O. Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.
The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the School's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction. Gates also donated $6 million to the construction of the Gates Computer Science Building, completed in January 1996, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department (CSD) and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.
On August 15, 2014, Bill Gates posted a video of himself dumping a bucket of ice water on his head, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg challenged him to do so, in order to raise awareness for the disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).
Bill Gates and his foundation are taking an interest in solving global sanitation problems since about 2005, for example by announcing the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" which has received considerable media interest. To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Bill Gates drank water which was "produced from human feces" in 2014 – in fact it was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni-processor. In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water.
Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they appear to be on a course to give away about 99.96 percent of their wealth.
Criticism
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies which have been accused of worsening poverty, polluting heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility. It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices. The Gates Millennium Scholars program has been criticized by Ernest W. Lefever for its exclusion of Caucasian students. The scholarship program is administered by the United Negro College Fund. In 2014, Bill Gates sparked a protest in Vancouver when he decided to donate 50 million dollars to UNAIDS through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the purpose of mass circumcision in Zambia and Swaziland.
Recognition
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In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.
Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time". Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.
According to Forbes, Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012, up from fifth in 2011.
In 1994, he was honored as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000; KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007; Harvard University in June 2007; Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in 2007, and Cambridge University in June 2009. He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.
Gates was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the Insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores". Gates received the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work. Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.
In 2015, Gates, along with his wife Melinda, received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country.
Entomologists named Bill Gates' flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor in 1997.
In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged.
In 2006, Gates received the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from The Tech Awards.
Paul Gardner Allen - American businessman, philanthropist, investor, musician, and innovator, best known as the co-founder of Microsoft, alongside Bill Gates. As of March 2016, he was estimated to be the 45th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $17.7 billion.
Childhood and Education
Paul Allen was born on January 21, 1953 in Seattle, Washington to Kenneth Sam Allen and Edna Faye (née Gardner) Allen. Allen attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle, where he befriended Bill Gates, three years younger, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakeside's Teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several time-sharing computer systems. After graduation, Allen went to Washington State University, where he joined Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, but dropped out after two years in order to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, near where Bill Gates had ended up as well. Allen later convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft.
Microsoft
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Paul Allen with his friend Bill Gates, in 1975, began marketing a BASIC programming language interpreter. Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft," as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In 1980, after promising to deliver IBM a Disk Operating System (DOS) they had not yet developed for the Intel 8088-based IBM PC, Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to purchase a Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) which was written by Tim Paterson who, at the time, was employed at Seattle Computer Products. As a result of this transaction, Microsoft was able to secure a contract to supply the DOS that would eventually run on IBM's PC line. This contract with IBM was the watershed in Microsoft history that led to Allen's and Gates' wealth and success. Allen effectively left Microsoft in 1982 due to serious illness. Allen officially resigned from his position on the Microsoft board of directors in November 2000 but was asked to consult as a senior strategy advisor to the company's executives and still owns a reported 100 million shares.
Aerospace
On December 13, 2011, Allen announced the creation of Stratolaunch Systems. Stratolaunch is a proposed orbital launch system consisting of a dual-bodied, 6 engine jet aircraft, capable of carrying a rocket to high altitude; the rocket would then separate from its carrier aircraft and fire its own engines to complete its climb into orbit. If successful, this project would be the first wholly privately funded space transport system. Stratolaunch, which is partnering with Orbital Sciences Corporation and Scaled Composites, is intended to launch in inclement weather, fly without worrying about the availability of launch pads and to operate from different locations. Stratolaunch plans to ultimately host six to ten missions per year. On April 13, 2015, Vulcan Aerospace was announced. It is the company within Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. that plans and executes projects to shift how the world conceptualizes space travel through cost reduction and on-demand access.
Real estate
Allen's Vulcan Real Estate division offers development and portfolio management services, and is known for the redevelopment of the South Lake Union neighborhood immediately north of downtown Seattle. Vulcan has developed 6.3 million square feet of new residential, office, retail and biotechnology research space and has a total development capacity of 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2). Vulcan advocated for the Seattle Streetcar line known as South Lake Union Streetcar, which runs from Seattle's Westlake Center to the south end of Lake Union. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal called Allen's South Lake Union investment "unexpectedly lucrative" and one that led to his firm selling a 1,800,000 square feet (170,000 m2) office complex to Amazon.com for US$1.16 billion, one of the most expensive office deals ever in Seattle. "It's exceeded my expectations," Mr. Allen said of the South Lake Union development.
Sports team ownership
Portland Trail Blazers
Allen purchased the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team in 1988 from California real estate developer Larry Weinberg for $70 million. He was instrumental in the development and funding of the Moda Center (previously known as the Rose Garden), the arena where the Blazers play. He purchased the arena on April 2, 2007, and stated that this was a major milestone and a positive step for the franchise. Since taking over the franchise, the Allen-owned Trail Blazers have reached the playoffs 19 times including the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992 (As of July 2015) According to Forbes, the Blazers were valued at $940 million in 2015 and ranked No. 12 out of 30 NBA teams.
Seattle Seahawks
Allen purchased the Seattle Seahawks NFL team in 1996 when former owner Ken Behring threatened to move the Seahawks to Southern California. Herman Sarkowsky, a former Seahawks minority owner, told The Seattle Times about Allen's decision to buy the team, "I'm not sure anybody else in this community would have done what [Allen] did." The Seahawks are valued at $1.33 billion in August 2014 by Forbes, which says the team has "one of the most rabid fan bases in the NFL." Under the helm of Allen, the Seahawks have been to the Super Bowl three times winning Super Bowl XLVIII and have won three NFC Championships (2005, 2013, 2014).
Seattle Sounders FC
Allen's Vulcan Sports & Entertainment is part of the ownership team of the Seattle Sounders FC, a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise that began play in 2009 at CenturyLink Field, a stadium also controlled by Allen. The ownership team also includes film producer Joe Roth, businessman Adrian Hanauer, and comedian Drew Carey. The Sounders sold out every home game during its first season, setting a new MLS record for average match attendance and the most season tickets sold in the league. Seattle Sounders FC is only the second expansion team in MLS history to win the U.S. Open Cup tournament in its first season.
Filmmaking
In 2013, Vulcan Productions co-produced the Richard E. Robbins-directed film Girl Rising which tells the stories of girls from different parts of the world who seek an education. Globally over 205 million households watched Girl Rising during the CNN and CNN International premieres, and over 4 million people have engaged with Girl Rising through websites and social media. Through the associated 10x10 program, over $2.1 million has been donated to help girls receive an education worldwide.
Also in 2013, Vulcan Productions signed on as a producing partner of Pandora's Promise, a documentary about nuclear power, directed by Oscar-nominated director Robert Stone. It was released in select theaters nationwide June 12, 2013 and on CNN on November 7, 2013. A variety of college and private screenings as well as panel discussions have been hosted throughout the country.
Philanthropy
Paul Allen has given more than $2 billion towards the advancement of science, technology, education, wildlife conservation, the arts and community services in his lifetime. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was established to administer a portion of Allen's philanthropic contributions. Since its formation, the foundation has given more than $494 million to over 1,500 nonprofits and in 2010, Allen became a signatory of The Giving Pledge, promising to give at least half of his fortune to philanthropic causes. Allen has received commendations for his philanthropic commitments including the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and Inside Philanthropy's "Philanthropist of the Year."
Science and research
In September 2003, Allen launched the Allen Institute for Brain Science with a $100 million contribution dedicated to understanding how the human brain works. In total, Paul Allen has donated $500 million to the institute, making it his single largest philanthropic recipient. Since its launch, the Allen Institute for Brain Science has taken a Big Science and Open Science approach to tackle projects. The institute makes research tools available to the scientific community using an open data model. Some of the institute's most notable projects include the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, Allen Human Brain Atlas and the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas. The Allen Institute is also helping to advance and shape the White House's BRAIN Initiative as well as the Human Brain Project.
Founded in 2014, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) main focus is to research and engineer artificial intelligence. The Institute is modeled after the Allen Institute for Brain Science and led by researcher and professor, Dr. Oren Etzioni. AI2 has undertaken four main projects, Aristo, Semantic Scholar, Euclid and Plato. Project Aristo is working to build an AI system capable of passing an 8th grade science exam.
In December 2014, Allen committed $100 million to create the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle. The institute is investigating and creating a virtual model of cells in the hope of bringing forth treatment of different diseases. Like the institutes before it, all data generated and tools developed will be made publicly available online.
Launched in 2016 with a $100 million commitment, The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group aims to discover and support ideas at the frontier of bioscience in an effort accelerate the pace of discovery. The group is led by Tom Skalak and will be targeting scientists and research areas that ″some might consider out-of-the-box at the very edges of knowledge.″
Allen launched the Allen Distinguished Investigators Awards (ADI) in 2010 to support scientists pursuing early-stage research projects who often have difficulty securing funding from traditional sources. The ADI grant program backs pioneering researchers in the areas of emerging life sciences technology to cellular decision-making and neural engineering with the intent that research made possible by these grants will advance each respective field.
Paul Allen donated the seed money to build SETI's Allen Telescope Array, eventually contributing $30 million to the project.
Allen has a flower fly named after him for his contributions to Dipterology, called Paul Allen's flower fly.
Environment and conservation
Allen has bankrolled a range of wildlife conservation projects over the past several years, including contributing millions in direct gifts and grants to program, projects, initiatives and charities. By marrying technology development with philanthropic interests, he is working to address the trafficking of endangered species and ensure stable or thriving generations of wild animals.
Allen provided more than $7 million to fund the census, the largest pan-African aerial survey since the 1970s. The Great Elephant Census team is flying over 20 countries to survey the African savannah elephants with hopes that the accurate and up-to-date data will spur immediate protective actions and long-term conservation management plans.
Allen began supporting the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us Project in 2014 to improve data on global fisheries as a way to fight illegal fishing. Part of his $2.6 million in funding will go to create FishBase, an online database about adult finfish.
Launched in July 2015, Paul Allen is funding the Global FinPrint initiative, a three-year survey of sharks and rays in coral reef areas. The survey is the largest of its kind and designed to provide data to help conservation programs. The initiative is a partnership between Allen's Vulcan Inc, Stony Brook University, Florida International University, James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences. Survey results will be made available in summer 2018.
Allen backed Washington state initiative 1401 to prohibit the purchase, sale and distribution of products made from 10 endangered species including elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, marine turtles, pangolins, sharks and rays. The initiative gained enough signatures to be on the state's ballot on November 3, 2015, and passed.
Alongside the United States Department of Transportation, Allen and Vulcan Inc. launched the Smart City Challenge, a contest inviting American cities to transform their transportation systems. Created in 2015 with USDOT's $40 million commitment as well as $10 million from Allen's Vulcan Inc., the challenge aims to create a first-of-its-kind modern city that will demonstrate how cities can improve quality of life while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The winning city will be named in June 2016.
Created in 2015, the Smart Catch program is designed for chefs by chefs to recognize and promote restaurants serving sustainable seafood. The program right now is being used by over 80 restaurants in Seattle.
As a founding member of the International SeaKeepers Society, Paul Allen hosts its proprietary SeaKeeper 1000TM oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring system on all three of his megayachts.
Paul Allen also has a long history of investing in Africa. Including the following:
Microgrids, Paul Allen is currently funding the building of microgrids, which are small-scale power grids that can operate independently, in Kenya to help promote reusable energy and empower its businesses and residents.
Wireless broadband, Allen was an early investor in the Mawingu Networks, a wireless and solar-powered Internet provider which aims to connect rural Africa with the world.
Off Grid Electric, a company focused on providing solar energy to people in emerging nations, Allen's investment is giving Tanzanians the ability to access electrical service for a very little cost.
Ebola
In 2014, Paul Allen pledged at least $100 million toward the fight to end the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, making him the largest private donor in the Ebola crisis. He also created a website called TackleEbola.org as a way to spread awareness as well as serve as a way donors can fund projects in need. The site additionally highlights organizations working to stop Ebola that Allen supports such as International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Médecins Sans Frontières, Partners in Health, UNICEF and World Food Program USA. On April 21, 2015, Allen brought together key leaders in the Ebola fight at the Ebola Innovation Summit in San Francisco. The summit aimed to share key learnings and reinforce the need for continued action and support to bring the number of Ebola cases down to zero. As part of his ongoing commitment to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Paul Allen Foundation partnered with the United States Department of State and MRIGlobal to develop a new first of its kind medevac biocontainment units. These units will be used by the U.S. State Department to help safely evacuate healthcare workers who might fall ill to infectious diseases such as Ebola.
In October 2015, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation announced it would award seven new grants totaling $11 million to prevent future widespread outbreaks of the virus.
The arts
Over the years, Paul Allen has established several non-profit community institutions that feature his private collections of historic artifacts. These include:
EMP Museum, a collection of rock 'n' roll and pop culture exhibits inside a Frank Gehry-designed building at Seattle Center, established in 2000. The EMP Museum also houses the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Flying Heritage Collection, which showcases restored vintage military aircraft and armaments primarily from the World War II era, established in 2004.
STARTUP Gallery, a permanent exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque dedicated to the history of the microcomputer, established in 2007.
Living Computer Museum, a collection of vintage computers in working order and available for interactive sessions on-site or through networked access, opened to the public in 2012.
An active art collector, Paul Allen has gifted more than $100 million to support the arts. On October 15, 2012, the Americans for the Arts awarded Allen with the Eli and Edythe Broad Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. Allen has also loaned out more than 300 pieces from his private art collection to 47 different venues. In 2013, Allen sold Barnett Newman's Onement VI (1953) at Sotheby's in New York for $43.8 million, surpassing its estimate of $30 million to $40 million.
В 2015 году Аллен основал Seattle Art Fair, четырехдневное мероприятие с 60+ галерей со всего мира, в том числе работ из галереи Гагосяна, Дэвид Zwirner и многие другие в. В мероприятии приняли участие тысячи и вдохновили другие спутниковые ярмарки по всему городу. Кроме того, в 2015 году Аллен объявил, что он будет открывая Pivot Art + Культура, галерею, которая будет находиться в новом Allen институте мозга Наука строительства. В галерее планируется открыть в зимний период 2015 года.
Образование
In 2015, Allen founded the Seattle Art Fair, a four-day event with 60+ galleries from around the world including works from the Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner and many others. The event drew thousands and inspired other satellite fairs throughout the city. Also in 2015, Allen announced that he'd be opening up Pivot Art + Culture, a gallery that will be located in the new Allen Institute for Brain Science building. The gallery is scheduled to open in the winter of 2015.
In 2002, Allen donated $14 million to the University of Washington to construct the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. The building was dedicated in October 2003.
In 2010, Allen announced a gift of $26 million to build the Paul G. Allen School of Global Animal Health at Washington State University, his alma mater. The gift is the largest private donation in the university's history.
Personal life
Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1982. His cancer was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy.
Allen has never married. He has been, at times, reclusive.
Music
Paul Allen received his first electric guitar at the age of sixteen, and was inspired to play it by listening to Jimi Hendrix. In 2000, Allen played rhythm guitar on the independently-produced and eponymous album Grown Men. In 2013, he had a major label release on Sony's Legacy Recordings; Everywhere at Once by Paul Allen and the Underthinkers. PopMatters.com described Everywhere at Once as "a quality release of blues-rock that's enjoyable from start to finish."
Yachting and treasure hunting
The launch of Paul Allen's 414 feet (126 m) yacht, Octopus, secured its position as one of the world's largest yachts in 2003. As of 2013, it is 14th in the list of motor yachts by length. The yacht is equipped with two helicopters, a submarine, an ROV, a swimming pool, a music studio and a basketball court.
Allen has loaned Octopus for a number of operations. Most notably, Octopus was used in the search for a missing American pilot and two officers whose plane disappeared off Palau and the study of a rare fish called a coelacanth among many others.
In 2012, Allen along with the Royal Navy attempted to retrieve the bell from HMS Hood, which sank in the Denmark Strait during World War II, as a national memorial. In March 2015, an Allen-led research team found the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Sibuyan Sea off the coast of the Philippines. Musashi and her sister ship Yamato were two of the largest and most technologically impressive battleships in naval history.
On August 7, 2015, Allen and his research team along with the Royal Navy went back again to the site of HMS Hood and recovered the bell. The bell will be restored and given to the British Royal Navy to memorialize the 1,415 men lost at sea.
Octopus is a member of AMVER, a voluntary group ship reporting system used worldwide by authorities to arrange assistance for those in distress at sea.
The ship is also known for its annual celebrity-studded parties hosted at Cannes film festival, where Allen and his band play for guests. These performances have included musicians such as Usher and Dave Stewart.
Allen also owns Meduse and Tatoosh,which is one of the world's 100 largest yachts. In January 2016, it was reported that Tatoosh allegedly damaged coral in the Cayman Islands. In April 2016, the Department of Environment (DoE) and Allen's Vulcan Inc. successfully completed a restoration plan to help speed recovery and protect the future of coral in this area.
MSN Search
Microsoft originally launched MSN Search in the third quarter of 1998, using search results from Inktomi. It consisted of a search engine, index, and web crawler. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily. The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.
Windows Live Search
The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8, 2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta.
In the roll-over from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own internal image search algorithms.
Live Search
On March 21, 2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live Search was merged with Microsoft adCenter.
A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search branding. On May 23, 2008, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a service for users to create their own custom search engines or use macros created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA on February 18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.
Rebrand, как Bing
Microsoft recognised that there would be a problem with branding as long as the word "Live" remained in the name. As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services, Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.
The Bing name was chosen through focus groups, and Microsoft decided that the name was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that it would function well as a URL around the world. The word would remind people of the sound made during "the moment of discovery and decision making." Microsoft was assisted by branding consultancy Interbrand in their search for the best name for the new search engine. The name also has strong similarity to the word 'bingo', which is used to mean that something sought has been found or realized, as is interjected when winning the game Bingo. Microsoft advertising strategist David Webster originally proposed the name "Bang" for the same reasons the name Bing was ultimately chosen (easy to spell, one syllable, and easy to remember). He noted, "It's there, it's an exclamation point [...] It's the opposite of a question mark." This name was ultimately not chosen because it could not be properly used as a verb in the context of an internet search; Webster commented "Oh, 'I banged it' is very different than 'I binged it'".
According to the Guardian "[Microsoft] hasn't confirmed that it stands recursively for Bing Is Not Google, but that's the sort of joke software engineers enjoy." Qi Lu, president of Microsoft Online Services, also announced that Bing's official Chinese name is bì yìng (simplified Chinese: 必应; traditional Chinese: 必應), which literally means "very certain to respond" or "very certain to answer" in Chinese.
While being tested internally by Microsoft employees, Bing's codename was Kumo (くも), which came from the Japanese word for spider (蜘蛛; くも, kumo) as well as cloud (雲; くも, kumo), referring to the manner in which search engines "spider" Internet resources to add them to their database, as well as cloud computing.
Legal challenges
On July 31, 2009, The Laptop Company, Inc. stated in a press release that it would challenge Bing's trademark application, alleging that Bing may cause confusion in the marketplace as Bing and their product BongoBing both do online product search. Software company TeraByte Unlimited, which has a product called BootIt Next Generation (abbreviated to BING), also contended the trademark application on similar grounds, as did a Missouri-based design company called Bing! Information Design.
Microsoft contended that claims challenging its trademark were without merit because these companies filed for U.S. federal trademark applications only after Microsoft filed for the Bing trademark in March 2009.
Yahoo! search deal
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a ten-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing, retaining the Yahoo! user interface. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell advertising on some Microsoft sites. All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012.
Views: 21 212
Date: 11-06-2016, 15:22
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