Microsoft company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999. In 2018, Microsoft surpassed Apple as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world after being dethroned by the tech giant in 2010. Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business utilizing their shared skills in computer programming. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. While Gates enrolled at Harvard, Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University, though he later dropped out of school to work at Honeywell.
The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book) The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book) The Road Ahead is a book written by Bill Gates, co-founder and then-CEO of the Microsoft software company, together with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson. Published in November 1995, then substantially revised about a year later, "The Road Ahead" summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. Gates received a $2.5 million advance for his book and money from subsidiary rights sales; all his proceeds were donated to "encourage the use of technology in education administered through