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.
Bill Gates gladly so... I've paid over $6 billion in taxes." He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich. Gates' days are planned for him, similar to the US President's schedule, on a minute-by-minute basis. Gates has written two books: In 2013, Gates became a LinkedIn Influencer. Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" on January 31, 2016, in which he talks about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week").