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.
Mimi Gardner Gates Mimi Gardner Gates Mary "Mimi" Gates (née Gardner; born July 30, 1943) is an American art historian who is the recent Director of the Seattle Art Museum. In 1996, she married Bill Gates Sr., father of Bill Gates. Gates holds a B.A. degree in art history from Stanford University, a certificate with honors in Chinese language and culture from the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris, an M.A. degree in Oriental and Chinese Studies from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. degree in Art History from Yale University. An old friend of Theresa Heinz Kerry, she is