In 31 years atop Microsoft (MSFT), Bill Gates was revered by some and loathed by others. He was a primary architect of the PC industry. Yet he'll be remembered as much for bare-knuckle tactics—and an antitrust judgment for anticompetitive behavior—than for tech breakthroughs.
So Gates enters this next phase with his legacy in the balance. He could go down as an Andrew Carnegie, who is remembered as a generous benefactor in spite of sometimes brutal treatment of workers; or as a John D. Rockefeller, whose Robber Baron image stuck despite later good works. Here's Gates, by the numbers.
MILLIONAIRE FACTORY. The success of Microsoft DOS, and, later, Windows, helped the PC spread to businesses and homes, empowering office workers and consumers alike. By the count of market researcher Gartner Inc. (IT), 1.75 billion Microsoft-powered PCs have been sold since 1981.
And consider the even bigger picture: Economists estimate that all information technology, including PCs, contributed about one-third of the 2% average annual U.S. productivity growth since 1995.
Gates's greatest legacy may be the creation of wealth, both his own and others'. Microsoft churned out $88 billion in profits since 1985, some sucked from customer pockets as payments on his monopolies in PC software. That drove up the company's stock, enriching Gates and other insiders, who held 26% of the shares in late 1999. But Microsoft also minted, by some estimates, thousands of other employee-millionaires, maybe the most at any company ever.
PHILANTHROPY FOCUS. By 2000, a broad swath of American investors owned a chunk of Microsoft shares, directly or in mutual funds or retirement plans. Unfortunately for those individuals, that's when the air began to leak out of the balloon. Microsoft's stock market value peaked on Dec. 27, 1999, at $600 billion. Since then, the stock has lost more than 60% of its value. Insiders sold aggressively, bringing their share of the company to 14% last year (9.5% for Gates personally).
Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its $29 billion endowment, Gates aims to improve health and education and reduce poverty worldwide. The $1.5 billion he has given to immunize poor children has already helped avert an estimated 1.7 million deaths. Gates will soon be working full-time for the foundation. Look at it this way: Gates's monopoly made him fabulously wealthy. But if he thrives as a philanthropist, at least his customers' money will be well spent.
Hamm is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York
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