It is official straight from Mr William Henry Gates III himself- on June 27th, Bill Gates will stop commuting to Microsoft’s Redmond campus on a daily basis, and begin full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he plans to donate his fortune of approximately $40 billion towards charitable causes. Bill Gates will retire from his day job as chief software architect of Microsoft, the company he founded more than three decades ago.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects.
Gates said he is leaving gradually in order to smooth the transition of his duties to the two men who will assume them–chief technical officers Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie, who have been named chief software architect and chief research and strategy officer, respectively, effective immediately. Steve Ballmer will still take the throne as the company’s key man, but Bill, despite his official announcement, Bill will still visit his Redmond office once per week, doing what Ballmer tells him to do.
There had been rather lots of speculation of what will become of Microsoft with the absence of their founder, and the problem is not just related to Microsoft as of yet- Apple is under speculation of a suitable successor as well, given the recent rumors of Steve Job’s progressive “thining-up” in all his press conferences together with his health problems.
Rather meaningful photo credit from Gizmodo
