There are a lot of questions about Bill Gates and twice as much rumors going around. There is even one FAQ file about Bill Gates that has huge amount of errors and misquotes. This FAQ answers all questions that I know about Bill Gates. This FAQ has no rumors, only confirmed facts. If you know more interesting details about Bill, please send them to me in e-mail.

1. How much money Bill Gates makes?

I really don't know, since that is not public information. Last leaked information about his salary is from 1991 and it was $274,996 with bonuses. Most of his personal cash is tied in Microsoft shares or in property, like his $50+ million house. He also owns some pretty expensive personal items, like original Leonardo da Vinci's "The Codex Hammer" script which is estimated at £19 million. His total assets are estimated (1996) to be little over $2 billions. He is not the richest man in the world, only in the western world. But it has been estimated that by the end of year 1997, he will be the richest man in the whole wide world.

2. How can I contact Bill Gates?

His personal e-mail address is billig@microsoft.com, so just send your interesting e-mail there. All incoming mail to that address is screened out first by employees. Bill also has a column that is published in many American newspapers and questions to that column can be sent to askbill@microsoft.com. I guess this address is screened out too. Questions about Microsoft products should be sent to support@microsoft.com, not to Bill. And please also note microsoft.* newsgroups which are a good place to ask information about Microsoft products.

3. Does Bill Gates do any charity?

When Bill Gates dies, most of his money will go to charity. He also supports a lot of charity organizations with Microsoft Corporation and his personal money. He usually makes big multi-million donations only. And all profits from his newest book called The Road Ahead went to National Foundation for the Improvement of Education (NFIE). Bill's father runs a charitable foundation and Bill has gave over $200 millions to that foundation. University of Washington has received $34 million, University of Harvard has received $6 million, University of Stanford has received $6 million... And the list keeps going on. Many schools and non-profit organizations also get Microsoft products for free.

4. Bill Gates is Married?

Yes he is, he got married 1.1.1993 in a secret location in Hawaii. He made sure that any reporters don't get any pictures so he booked out every hotel room in the island. All information available of those weddings is that best man was Steve Ballmer. His wife is Melinda French who has worked several years at Microsoft Corporation as software marketing manager. She continues her work with Microsoft currently, Melinda's name can also be found from several Microsoft products, for example Windows 95, Windows '97 betas and Office 97. Microsoft Powerpoint is commonly known as Melinda's favorite project. They have one child, who was born in 26th of April, 1996. Her name is Jennifer Bellamy Gates.

5. Bill Gates parents and family?

His father is William Gates Sr. who is highly reputable corporate lawyer at Seattle, but he is now semi-retired. Now he focused on running a charitable foundation that has been donated over $200 million by MicroSoft Corporation. Bill's mother Mary Gates died in 1994. She worked in a number of positions, for example director of a bank, regent of the University of Washington and Board of Directories at United Way. Microsoft Corporation headquarters are in a street named "Microsoft Way One" after Bill's mothers company United Way at Redmond, Washington, USA. Bill has two sisters, Kirsti and Libby. Kirsti is one year older than Bill and Libby is nine years younger. Libby has two kids.

6. Childhood of Bill?

Bill Gates was born in 28th of October 1955. He first went to Lakeside, an expensive private school and after that he went to Harvard University. He met his friend and eventual colleague Paul Allen at Lakeside. Bill did not have a troubled childhood, but in a Playboy Magazine interview he said that he'd been referred to a psychiatrist for a year and half due some problems at school when he was 13 years old. At school Bill's grades were low on those subjects that did not interest him, he did this deliberately so he could spend more time on those subjects that he was interested in.

7. How did Bill get interested about computers?

His school Lakeside got ASR-33 teletype computer in 1968 and Bill got interested in it. He played a lot with computers and usually his best friend Paul Allen was with him. They saw an article in Popular Electronics magazine about Altair 8800 minicomputer and that inspired Gates and Allen to develop the first programming language.

The language was BASIC and Paul & Gates believed they could make some serious money with BASIC by selling it to other machines. So they formed a company called Microsoft Partnership and started selling BASIC. Next four years they produced some other programming languages, for example Cobol and Fortran. After that they were big enough to open Far Eastern division of Microsoft Partnership and to win their first court battle with MITS (developer of Altair) about possession rights.

In April 1979 they received IPC Million Dollar Award for their work and spent it opening a retail division for selling the Microsoft Partnership software. In June 1981 Microsoft Partnership becomes Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates as the President and Paul Allen as the Vice President.

In August 1981 IBM created IBM PC and they approached Bill to make an operating system for it. Bill's local hacker friend Tim Paterson at Seattle Computers had wrote an QDOS operating system (QDOS means Quick and Dirty Disk Operating System) for 16-bit Intel Chips. Bill bought QDOS at $75,000 and Tim bought a Toyota with that money (Tim still has the same Toyota).

Bill and Paul Allen converted QDOS from 16-bit operating system to 8-bit operating system and made changes that IBM asked. Tim Peterson has been quoted to say "Everyone thinks it was IBM who were first to have it. That's crap. We shipped it a year before they did".

At lakeside school Bill said to Paul Allen at Lakeside while looking at the ASR-33 teletype computer the following: "Don't you think someday everyone will have one of these things? And if they did, couldn't you deliver magazines and newspapers and staff though them. I mean, I wonder if you could make money doing something like that?". That was 27 years and over $10 billion dollars ago...

8. Paul Allen? Who is he?

Paul Allen was diagnosed having Hodgkinson's disease and so he resigned from him position as executive vice president of Microsoft in February 1983. But he stayed on the board of directors and has been a close friend of Bill always. Paul is one of the richest men in America, his total assets are over $2 billion dollars. Without Paul, there would be no Microsoft. He did some pretty good work in the early days at Microsoft, for example he was the mastermind behind Altair BASIC and had the important contacts to MITS. Paul has bought a basketball team and looks games from his wheelchair.

9. You didn't know this about Bill?

All friends of Bill call him "Tray", which comes from his full name "William Gates III". Some people in the computer industry have other nicknames, like people at Lotus (who really hate Bill) call him "Gator".

Gates does not know almost anything about popular culture. For example when pop star Sting phoned to Gates asking to meet him, Gates phoned to a friend and asked "Who is Sting?". After the meeting with Sting, Gates described Sting as "A really smart guy".

Gates likes to drink milk a lot while driving a car. He usually tosses the empty cartons over his shoulder to the back seat. Consequently his car is reputed to smell of sour milk.

George Grayson, one of the founders of Micrografx, doesn't like Gates all that much. Grayson has once said "I half-jokingly say there is only one person with fewer friends than Saddam Hussein. And that's Bill Gates".

Gates $50 million house is precision-built. After planting a huge cedar tree on the site, the construction chief was instructed by two architects working for Bill to uproot the tree and replant it 4.5 inches away from its original position. It took the architects two hours to come to this decision.

The original Local Area Network (LAN) was developed by Microsoft with a company called 3Com. These two companies didn't get along too well, Bob Metcalfe from 3Com once said "Our engineers were treated like shit by the Microsoft people. They were forced to suffer daily indignities in the face of these obnoxiously arrogant programmers. One of my friend referred to them as the Hitler Youth".

When Gates was 11 years old he said to his pastor: "I can do anything I put my mind to".

One journalist who has been able to get close to Gates describes him to be "nervous, fidgety fellow, constantly rocking back and forth in his seat, almost to the point of falling out. He clenches and unclenches his hands, either avoiding the eye, or staring right at it".

Gates has read thousands of books, he eats books for breakfast. His interests range from biotechnology to medieval philosophy. And when he gets interested about something, he has to know everything there is to know about it. When Gates goes to a meeting with an important official or renowned figure, he goes and reads everything he can lay his hands on about that person. Bill's friend Ann Winbald said "To Bill, life is school. There's always something to learn".

Gates taste could be described as soft. He likes Carry Grant films, music by Frank Sinatra and other stars from 40s and 50s. He does not watch TV for fear of developing an unhealthy interest in banal shows. One reported discovered that when a friend gave Gates a television, Gates had the turner disabled so that all he could do with it was watch videos.

In Microsoft Corporation headquoters at Redmond, Washington (called Microsoft Campus by insiders) he is described to be rude, snappy and condescending to those employees who've been less than efficient. The word "Campus" is used becouse it is huge area, several staff buildings, own shops, tennis and other sporting fields etc.

Gates likes playing poker. When he was young, he was well known for his love of late-night poker sessions with friends at college. He admits that gambling has been a part of his life and said "Oh yeah, I could lose a lot of money. Confidence will do that for you".

Gates has Compaq Deskpro P200 Pentium Pro machine with Windows NT 4.0 Workstation at his desk in the Microsoft Campus at Redmond (1997 February). He has been spotted carrying around IBM Thinkpad several times during 1996-1997. Rumor says, that he has removed IBM stickers from his Thinkpad :-)

Gates has always maintained a modest lifestyle, despite the amount of money he indirectly owns. When asked why he doesn't use limos and private jets, Gates replied "It sets a bad example. I think eventually you get used to those things - then you're just abnormal - I'm afraid I'd get used to it".

Every six months bottom five percent of Microsoft Corporations work force (in terms of performance) get fired. Gates commented this by saying "There are other jobs out there. If they don't have what it takes to work at Microsoft, they can go to Boeing or back East".

10. Books about or by Bill Gates?

Book: "The Road Ahead"
by Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson.

Book: "Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry"
by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews
 

Book: "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire"
by James Wallace and Jim Erickson
 

Book: "The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts Its Competition"
by Randall E. Stross.
 

Book: "I Sing the Body Electronic : A Year With Microsoft"
by Fred Moody
 

Book: "Microserfs"
by Douglas Coupland.
 

11. This document

This document is Copyrighted property.. You are allowed to copy this document freely, if you have not made any changes to this document (including this copyrights notice). For commercial use, please contact author for written approval.

Information for this document is collected from books listed above, plus various interviews of Bill Gates in magazines (Playboy, Fortune Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine, The Financial Times Magazine, The Face Magazine and Wall Street Journal).