Bill Gates

So Bill is retiring. I suppose he has enough money to retire. A lot of people have gripes about the way he ran his business, but no one can truely say he's not a genius.

Microsoft has really been synonymous with Bill Gates for some time. You can't think of one without the other. There aren't really a lot of companies like that, with a notable exception being Steve Jobs and Apple. I wonder what the new face of Microsoft will be. I don't think any mere mortal can fill Bill's shoes.

I hope Bill is able to devote more time to his Gates Foundation. It's his philantropic organization that spends over one and a half billion dollars a year. Just so we can see some numbers, that's $1,566,809,000. Seriously, if you knocked off the first 3 or 4 digits, that would still be a truckload of money.

Bill, thanks for the many years. Your company was a driving force behind the ability to put an inexpensive PC in the majority of US homes, and a workstation in every cube. For that, we are grateful. Goodbye.