Bill Gates is stepping down from an active role in Microsoft:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Microsoft announced Thursday that chairman and co-founder Bill Gates will transition out of a day to day role at the company, effective July 2008, to spend more time working on his charitable foundation.
Gates will then work part-time at Microsoft (up $0.19 to $22.07, Charts) as chairman and technical advisor and will work full time for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the organization he founded with his wife, which focuses on global health and education.
“I’ve decided that two years from today, I will reorganize my personal priorities,” Gates said during a conference call.
“I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility – the responsibility to give back to soicety and make sure those resources are given back in the best possible way, to those in need,” he said.
Very John D. Rockefeller of him. For better or worse, Gates is the man primarily responsible for making Microsoft what it is today. It will be interesting to see what his successors are able to do in the face of competition from Apple, Google, and Linux.
