Bill Gates leaves Microsoft

SEATTLE - Sensing the start of a personal computer revolution, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 to start Microsoft and pursue a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home.
Three decades later, Gates is set to step down today from what is now the world's largest software company to work full-time at the charitable organization - the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - built by his vast fortune.
No longer the world's richest man - he has been topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico's telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim - Gates says great wealth brings with it great responsibility.
The 52-year-old, whose boyish looks seem at odds with his graying hair, will leave behind a life's work developing software to devote energy to finding new vaccines or to micro-finance projects in the developing world.
As Microsoft's biggest shareholder, Gates will remain chairman and work on special technology projects. His 8.7 per cent stake in Microsoft is worth about $23 billion.

Gates first programmed a computer at 13, creating a class scheduling system for his Seattle high school. As he gained more experience, he realised the potential that software held to change how humans worked, played and communicated.
"When I was 19, I caught sight of the future and based my career on what I saw. I turned out to have been right," Gates wrote in his 1995 book "The Road Ahead."
Gates realised at an early stage of the PC revolution that software would be more important than hardware. Working with boyhood friend Paul Allen, Gates founded Microsoft, naming the company for its mission of providing microcomputer software.
Privileged upbringing
Gates was born October 28, 1955, the second of three children in a prominent Seattle family. His father, William Henry Gates Jr., was a partner at one of the city's most powerful law firms, while his late mother, Mary, was an active charity fund-raiser and University of Washington regent.
He was introduced to computers at the exclusive Lakeside Preparatory School, where the teen prodigy began programming in BASIC computer language on a primitive ASR-33 Teletype unit.
It was at Lakeside that Gates met Allen, a student two years his senior who shared his fascination with computers.
"Of course, in those days we were just goofing around, or so we thought," Gates recalled in "The Road Ahead."
During his two years at Harvard, Gates devoted much of his time to programming marathons and all-night poker sessions before dropping out to work on software for the Altair, a clunky desktop computer that cost $400 in kit form.
Also at Harvard, Gates became friends with an ebullient Detroit native who shared his love of math and cynical humour. Gates eventually talked that classmate, current CEO Steve Ballmer, into leaving business school to join Microsoft.