The Story of Bill Gates (Documentary)

When the biographers and historians write the history of the 20th century, Bill Gates is going to go down as the best businessman of our century, and Microsoft is one of the greatest companies of the 20th century. He and Paul Allen really saw from the beginning the kind of potential that it had to change the lives of all of us. By the time he went to college, it was probably beginning to be quite clear to him that what he was going to do was going to have to do with computers. What makes Gates so competitive is that he finds it fun. He finds this like a thrilling game, like the games he used to play as a kid. I think people would say that they perceive Microsoft as always playing with both feet on the foul line. I have no doubt that 100 years from now, he will be talked about in the same way that Rockefeller and Carnegie and Florida talked about as people who transformed an era. The Pacific Northwest, with its resources and raw beauty, has long lured pioneers and visionaries. Among them was Bill Gates' great-grandfather, J.W. Maxwell, who founded First National Bank in Seattle. The Maxwells enjoyed their privileges and social position, but were never ostentatious. Their son Willard, also a banker, and his wife Adele, who had a passion for playing cards, were among Seattle's top civic leaders. Their only child, Mary, was a lively, intelligent girl who made a name for herself as a student leader at the University of Washington. Athletic and outgoing, Mary Maxwell was sometimes referred to as Giggles. Her drive and energy impressed everyone. There tends to be a handful that is right at the core of the action. Mary was at the core of the action. Mary was unaffected, straightforward, charming, but immensely determined. It was at the university that Mary Maxwell met and fell in love with a quiet, scholarly young man named Bill Gates Jr. Bill would go on to become one of Seattle's most prominent attorneys. When Bill and Mary wed in 1951, she decided to give up a career as a teacher to raise a family and devote time to charitable work. The first of the Gates' three children, Christy, was born in 1953. She was followed by a brother, Bill Gates III, born on October 28, 1955. He was given the nickname Trey. That derives from the fact that he was William H. Gates III, and the card players in the family think of anything with a three as being a Trey, so he became Trey. His mother had an extremely close relationship with young Bill. She even took him with her when she volunteered as a lecturer in Seattle schools. Soon, her precocious son would read the World Book Encyclopedia from A to Z. We'd lose him sometimes for hours at a time, and when I would ask, what are you doing? He'd say, I'm thinking, mother. Well, the curiosity killed the cat, but it didn't kill Bill. Bill was curious. He was always eager to know more, and he had encouragement from his mom and dad. The Gates family prized competition, and young Bill loved testing his mettle in outdoor activities and indoor games. Among his favorite board games were Risk, in which the object is world domination, and Monopoly, where being in the right place at the right time can make you rich. He was competitive in cards with his sister, races to see who could do jigsaw puzzles faster, ski racing, sailing, whatever. He wanted to do it well and as good as the other folks that he was with. Every summer, the Gates family went off to their place on the Hood Canal called Cheerio. It was here that Bill, his younger sister Libby, family members and friends staged their own Olympic games. If you stayed overnight and had a couple of days with them, you would come away exhausted from games and activity. It was a very lively scene. It was definitely competitive, there's no question about it, and the children were all part of that. There was never a dull moment. The Seattle World's Fair opened in 1962, displaying the wonders predicted for the 21st century, including computer technology young Bill Gates got an eye for. Bill often returned to visit the high-tech exhibits. It was clear that he had a natural talent for math and science, but he was also becoming something of a loner, showing signs of preteen rebelliousness that put him at odds with his mother. Mary and I grew up in very orderly families where parents were controlling personalities, and we carried that forward. And that particular mode wasn't exactly consistent with Bill or Trey, who somewhere around about 11 or 12 began to be very independent emotionally. He was quite willing to make up his own mind about what he wanted to do and not do, and that was really tough for us, particularly for Mary. He was kind of lost. I mean, he was ill at ease in school, wasn't sure exactly how he wanted to spend his time. Obviously a very smart, brilliant kid, but kind of lacking direction. And he went through some counseling at that time. He went through a change in his school. While they believed in public education, Bill's parents realized he'd find more direction and discipline at Lakeside, Seattle's best private prep school. Lakeside only accepted the brightest and the best students, and at Lakeside, Bill began to blossom. He made new friends and relished academic challenge. He was an excellent math student. He was excellent across the board. He was a superb drama student and interested in reading all different kinds of books and so forth. So he wasn't just totally math-science oriented. He had a wide breadth of interests. When Bill started high school in 1969, the U.S. space program was at its apex. Apollo 11 took men to the moon that July, and computers made it possible. They were giant machines that cost millions of dollars and required an army of people to run them. Most schools then could never consider buying a computer, but Lakeside had made an extraordinary deal that would be fateful for Bill Gates. A Seattle company offered the use of its computer through a teletype link to the school. Young Gates was immediately entranced by the possibilities of this primitive machine and started spending every free moment in the computer room. The story has often been told, and it's completely true, that he would get up at night and leave and go over to work on the computer and come back. We wouldn't know that he'd been gone. As I recall, the headmaster here was asked at a parents' meeting once, Do you have a drug problem here at the school? And his response was, No, I don't think we have a drug problem, but we do have a number of students that are hooked on computers. Bill Gates shared this addiction with an upperclassman named Paul Allen. They could not have been more different. Allen was two years older and substantially larger. Allen was quiet and contemplative. Bill could be shrill and confrontational. Who knew this odd couple would change the world? They bonded by writing software code together and somewhat competitive, Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Every now and then would have fights. At one point, Paul Allen kicked Bill Gates, who was a little bit younger, off of the little group they had as writing software. But then he realized he needed Gates back. He couldn't do it without him. And Gates said, Well, I'm happy to come back, but this time I'm going to be in charge. By 1970, when Bill was just 15, he and Paul Allen went into business together. They made $20,000 with a computer program called Traf-O-Data, which measured traffic flow in the Seattle area. Although Bill had the luxury of family money, he was determined from the start to make his own fortune. The father of one of Bill's boyhood friends said, Bill always had a nose for the dollar. Even as a kid, he knew the value of a contract and even had a contract to use his older sister's baseball mitt that was signed in the legal document. In the summer of 1972, at the age of 17, Bill went to Washington, D.C. to work as a Senate page. His exposure to politics and government would come in handy later on. Back home that fall, he took a leave of absence from school. When he and Paul Allen got their first real jobs with a computer company. But when they began talking about starting their own company, Bill's parents insisted their son finish high school and attend college. His mother used to worry that he was socially awkward. Well, maybe he was, but he had other things on his mind and he was not rude, he was not abrupt. He was marching to a different drummer. He's a genius and he has a different agenda. Bill graduated from Lakeside in 1973 and his parents took great pride in his acceptance at Harvard University. But his destiny had already been set in motion. It was computer driven. In the fall of 1973, Bill Gates said goodbye to his family and Seattle and headed east to Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a freshman at Harvard, he thought briefly about preparing for a career in law. But no course of study ignited his imagination like his work with computers. Bill was somebody who was always very determined to do what he was interested in doing. The things that he was less interested in, which often included his academic classes, he tended simply to coast and get by on talent. I remember there was a course in Introduction to Greek Literature where he'd really done, as best as I could tell, none of the work during the year. Stayed up all night the night before the exam, slept through part of the exam and still got a B. It was not surprising Gates fell asleep during a test. Between his classes and the time he spent at the Harvard Computer Center, he seemed to be on the go 24 hours a day. He was always very focused on whatever it was that he was doing. He could come into his room, not get undressed, just kind of lie down on his bed, which of course would be not made because he had never had time for that, and just fall asleep. Door open, fully clothed, lie down, sleep, and then when he's refreshed, boom, back up, at it, and whatever the next thing was. Bill paused long enough to make some lasting friendships at Harvard, but his social life was not a priority. He dated only occasionally with varying degrees of success. I interviewed several women who had dated Bill just briefly. One told me the very first question Bill asked her was, what did you score on your SAT test? This is not exactly what a young woman wants to hear. For Bill Gates, though, he had scored a perfect 800 on his math portion of the SAT, and this was a matter of pride with him, and he wanted to make sure whoever he was dating had scored a pretty high grade. Bill did shine in math, but when he found that he was not the number one math student at Harvard, he decided against becoming a mathematician. He kept his academic options open and picked up some new skills outside of class. I spent a great deal of time playing pinball, video games, and especially poker, which was something that we all did a lot of back in college. And, you know, poker, of course, is a very competitive game, and in many ways, perhaps the best preparation for the business world that one could imagine. And, you know, Bill really turned himself from being a player whom people would take advantage of to a very good poker player. But it was Paul Allen, Bill's former schoolmate and business partner, who delivered Gates' biggest stroke of luck. Allen had moved to Boston from Seattle for a job. In December of 1974, he picked up a magazine in Harvard Square. The cover of Popular Electronics announced the arrival of the world's first mini computer kit, the Altair 8800. He rushed to show it to Bill. Gates and Allen knew instantly that the day of the personal computer had arrived. They saw that this was going to be an incredible force, an incredible dynamic for the society, and recognized the moment. The Altair was made by a small company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from the former atomic testing grounds at Alamogordo. Ed Roberts, who ran the company, was looking for someone to create software to run on his little computers. Gates and Allen convinced him that they were the ones who could do it, and worked day and night at the Harvard Computer Center for two months. In February of 1975, Paul Allen went to Albuquerque to test the program. When he loaded the Altair with what Bill Gates called, the coolest code I ever wrote, it worked. The importance of that moment would have an historic impact on the computer industry. I don't think we appreciated the significance of the Albuquerque thing when it first happened. But it didn't take long to realize that they were at the threshold of something that could be quite significant. For 19-year-old Bill Gates, life would never be the same. In the summer of 1975, he and Paul Allen formed Microsoft. Their ongoing work with Ed Roberts' company became so consuming that Bill dropped out of Harvard just before his senior year, and moved to Albuquerque. Mary Gates was deeply disappointed. We told him that we'd put some money aside for him to attend school, and if he didn't finish in a few years, we'd have to make some other use of those funds. And by that time, he allowed us out. That would be okay. He'd probably be able to afford to go back if and when the time came. Bill was certain that he'd made the right decision. But making it in software would not be easy. Back then, the personal computer culture was populated by users who shared new information and software. They were not interested in paying for it. It was a custom that put Bill at odds with his peers. Hey, you know, there's a bunch of high school kids and college kids who were doing something very non-mainstream. And Bill was very unpopular because he said, Hey, guys, don't steal this stuff. We made it and we own it. And that was, yeah, he was one of the business guys in what was a lot of geek hackers. In fact, Gates wrote an open letter to computer hobbyists chastising them about making copies of Microsoft's program. It stated, As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share? Who cares if people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair? But those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. He was looked at as kind of a renegade, and it was different, you know, a different ethic than prevailed at that time. But I'm not sure that the software industry would have evolved in anywhere near the way it has without somebody standing up and saying that that was necessary. Bill had also been battling with Ed Roberts, who considered him spoiled and obnoxious. The two disagreed about almost everything, and Roberts was a formidable adversary. Ed Roberts was a massive man, something like 6'6", weighed 300 pounds. Here Bill Gates was, I mean, he formed Microsoft at age 19, and he looked like he was 13 years old. He was standing up to this bear of a man going face to face with him and screaming and shouting matches. A final confrontation came in May of 1977, when Roberts sold his business, and Gates had to sue to keep the software he and Paul Allen created for the company. Gates won. We take a hard line on software. Microsoft expanded into new software languages, and Gates and Allen started to sell their products to other computer companies. At the end of 1978, with sales approaching the one million mark, they moved Microsoft from Albuquerque to Seattle. Bill was glad to be home, and soon added Pitchman to his rapidly expanding resume. We always design with the future in mind. Our research people are always tracking the latest in hardware and software technology. It was Bill Gates who was actually the real marketing genius behind Microsoft. Early on, he was the one who was actually going out on the road and trying to sell this company and its software, and oftentimes he would take his mother with him on these trips. Bill's highly respected and well-connected mother would come to play a pivotal role in Microsoft's future. Mary served on a number of corporate boards, as well as the University of Washington. She was on the National Board of United Way. Also on the National Board of United Way was the CEO of IBM, which is how her son met the CEO of IBM, through her. What would your ideal home computer be like? By November of 1980, IBM was banging on the door of the fledgling Microsoft, the largest maker of computers in the world, now wanted to talk to Gates and Allen about coming up with an operating system for their new line of personal computers. From the beginning, IBM misjudged Bill Gates. He looked like a sub-team, you know, he was skinny, had a real mop of hair, you know, kind of casual, and basically people didn't take him seriously as a business person. But IBM soon discovered Gates was no amateur. He quickly convinced them that Microsoft could deliver their new software. First, he purchased an existing operating system, which he then adapted for the IBM personal computers, calling it MS-DOS. Bill Gates, as he's often done as a shrewd businessman, knew where to get an operating system. He just went down the road a few miles and bought it for $50,000. But then the real brilliance was that when they developed that operating system for IBM, IBM wanted to buy the source code, which would have given them the disk operating system, or what became known as DOS, and instead Microsoft refused to actually sign the rights over to DOS. By not owning the rights to the operating system, IBM would now have to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for every single copy of DOS installed in its computers. As other companies introduced personal computers that were cheaper than IBM's, Microsoft sold the same operating system to them too. There were all kinds of computers that were being conceived at that point in time, and it struck me that I don't know who will win in the hardware business, but Microsoft has a very good chance to win in the software business. Between 1978 and 1981, Microsoft's growth was staggering. The staff was enlarged from 13 employees to 128. Revenues mushroomed from $4 to $16 million. By 1983, 30% of all the personal computers in the world were running Microsoft software. Still, Bill Gates never took his eye off the bottom line. He never flew first class unless it was absolutely necessary. You would often find him sitting in coach, back with a blanket over his head so he could get some sleep. So his parents taught him well early on the value of money and hard work, and translated later into his life with not only how he ran his personal life, but how he ran Microsoft. My name is Bill Gates. I'm chairman of Microsoft. The early 1980s was an exciting time for an industry run mostly by people under 30. Microsoft began working on software for innovative companies like Apple and its guru Steve Jobs. Apple's Macintosh computer and software were ingenious and user-friendly, and many believed Apple was the way of the future. To create a new standard, it takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh of all the machines I've ever seen is the only one that meets that standard. It wouldn't be long before Microsoft and Apple would be locked in a bitter battle. And Bill Gates' partner and boyhood friend would be in the fight for his life. By 1983, the future could not have looked more promising for 28-year-old Bill Gates and Microsoft. The personal computer business was booming, and there was an ever-increasing hunger for software. Bill Gates and Paul Allen were emerging as the crown princes of the personal computer age. But in the midst of the breathtaking rise of their company, they were stunned when Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer. It did give Bill kind of a perspective that he didn't have before. You know, he'd always been very, very hard-driving, very demanding, and this may have helped him understand a little bit better in terms of what other people go through. Allen's disease went into remission one year later, but he would never again take full part in the day-to-day business of Microsoft. For two young men who created a company of global significance and made millions, it was the end of an era. I think history's going to show that their partnership really was an incredible dynamic. I often compare it to the Beatles and Lennon and McCartney. The songs they wrote together are the ones that pretty much we remember and get played over and over again. They were great songwriters individually, and we still hear their songs that they wrote on their own. But somehow together, they were even greater than the sum of their parts. And Paul and Bill were like that. By 1984, Bill Gates had become the singular face of Microsoft. In April of that year, he was heralded by Time magazine as the quintessential representative of a new breed of businessman, one who understood both nuts and bolts technology and corporate strategy. When you work with Bill, you can see that in almost any meeting you're in or anything you're discussing, Bill instantly puts together a profile of all of the cases. What about this? He almost builds this checklist of everything that can possibly happen in his head in a very structured way, and then he runs through it. Microsoft was often referred to as a math camp, where Gates' demanding management style kept the creative process churning and sometimes set off heated confrontations. The early Gates would challenge just about anything. He'd call things the stupidest idea you'd ever heard. And part of it was to test, to see, well, OK, if you disagree, you've got to convince me that it's not the stupidest idea in the world. Gates believed that challenging ideas was required to stay on top in an ever-changing industry. He surrounded himself with a team that shared his beliefs and his relentless work ethic. Certainly when we are working to release a software product, we are sleepless in Seattle. There's a story about Bill from Miriam Lubow, his assistant. She was new to the company. She came in one morning and she didn't know if she should call police because there was this guy sleeping under a desk. But it turned out to be Bill. The effort was paying off. Microsoft posted more than $140 million in sales in 1985. Running a company on a round-the-clock schedule was not conducive to a social life. Bill Gates did manage to have one steady girlfriend in Jill Bennett. She told me that it was difficult maintaining a relationship with somebody who was working, you know, three days straight without sleep. Oftentimes he would end up on her doorstep, I mean, half dead. He would be talking to her, thinking about software and doing something else, all three at the same time. She said it was amazing watching him. At the center of his marathon lifestyle was a new product. In 1986, Gates introduced Microsoft Windows. It would become the company's signature program. Critics quickly noted that in its use of a mouse and icons, it bore more than a passing resemblance to the Apple Macintosh operating system. If you know how to point, you already know how to use it. Macintosh, the computer for the rest of us. Apple had given Gates full access to their technology while he was working on new software for the Macintosh computer. Gates advised Apple early on that they should license their software, but Apple was more interested in selling computers than software, so they ignored the suggestion. Once again, Gates took advantage of an opening and ran with it. In this industry, we compete and we collaborate at the same time. Bill once had a conversation with me, he says, you know, I'm a competitor, so even though I'm a friend, don't tell me information that you don't want me to use against you because I'm going to compete with you, and if you tell me something that's useful in competing, I'm going to use that information. Infuriated, Apple decided it would not allow Gates to take a bite out of its business and threatened to sue over Windows. Gates in turn said he would withhold Microsoft software Apple desperately needed. In the end, Microsoft overpowered Apple in the courts. Eventually, Microsoft prevailed by showing that even though there were similarities in the way that the two computers operated, each individual function of Windows was markedly different from each individual function of the Macintosh. Even though the first version of Windows was far from perfect, it gave Microsoft a new financial and creative base. In 1986, Bill Gates took his company public. He held 45% of the stock, which made him a billionaire at the age of 31. Yet Gates never became complacent. He doesn't want to fail, and when you have that kind of a fear, when you're always looking in your rearview mirror to see who might be, you know, creeping up to do in Microsoft on a given day, it just consumes him, and it makes him certainly the most competitive human being in the personal computer industry. He's driven. It's white-hot intensity. He was also gaining a reputation for being ruthless, and some powerful forces began to line up against him. IBM was taking a new look at the popularity of personal computers and believed it had the punch to knock Microsoft out of business. By 1987, Bill Gates was one of the youngest billionaires in the world, and Microsoft seemed to have an open field in providing software for personal computers. But Gates was about to face a crisis. Now that PCs had taken off, IBM chose to make a big push with its own operating system. IBM replaced DOS, which it had been licensing from Microsoft, with OS2. We were concerned whether we could weather the storm, so to speak, especially given the fact that this was a big storm. IBM, a very powerful company, a lot of software people, a lot of cash, a lot of resolve to potentially put Microsoft out of the operating system business. Ironically, Microsoft played a role in developing OS2, but Bill Gates was not about to abandon his own software. He decided to stake his company's future and his own reputation on the Windows software his team continued to upgrade, even if it meant losing IBM as his biggest customer. On May 22, 1990, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. This new and improved version swiftly became a bestseller. Ultimately, IBM's OS2 failed in the marketplace, leaving Microsoft with a virtual monopoly on operating systems for personal computers. But soon, the Federal Trade Commission began looking at claims that Gates was using this dominance to cut off competition by cutting prices on Microsoft products. It seemed Microsoft's mild-mannered chairman had developed a seek-and-destroy image. Bill Gates is not a brutal guy. He just needs to win. And he's willing to win, you know, gracefully or non-gracefully. Doesn't matter. A win is still a win. Predatory pricing was not the only charge leveled at Microsoft. In 1993, the Justice Department began a new investigation. It examined complaints that Microsoft charged computer makers a licensing fee based on the total number of computers they sold. That fee included computers not running Microsoft software. They made computer manufacturers pay for the Microsoft software, whether it was installed on their computer or not. And as a result of that, they prevented competitors from entering the market. The Justice Department has charged Microsoft, the world's largest software company, with using unfair marketing and contracting practices. In July of 1994, Microsoft agreed to stop charging the fees in question. And the Justice Department dropped the case. Gates would never admit that Microsoft had a monopoly and maintained he was simply providing better software at lower prices. I mean, we're not like an alligator. We don't go around and eat things. We come out with these little boxes, these nice little software packages, and you stick them in your computer, and you either have fun using it, and it helps you get things done or not. But it wasn't that simple for investors. The government probes and the fights with IBM and Apple caused the value of Microsoft's stock to drop. There was now more pressure than ever to turn out the next version of Windows. Gates found some creative ways to release the tension. He appeared in commercials for his companies with Microsoft top gun Steve Ballmer. He made dramatic entrances to tout his company at software conventions, once arriving as Star Trek's Mr. Spock. Gates also instituted the Micro Games, a hodgepodge competition among the Microsoft workers, reminiscent of the games he played as a child at the Hood Canal. It was like summer camp for adults. We'd all go to his house, and he would spend months figuring out what the various games would be, and he would be sort of the master of ceremonies. He'd form us into teams, very carefully figuring out the dynamics of the teams, and how we might all interact, and then we would have to do these like summer camp games. And I met Melinda first at one of those Micro Games. Melinda was 28-year-old Melinda French, a Duke graduate with an MBA. She had been working as an executive at Microsoft for several years. It was becoming increasingly clear to Bill's family and friends that she was the woman that the 37-year-old Gates had decided to marry. He dated Melinda for quite a while before they got married, and so I saw them together over the years, and they always looked like they had a very special thing going, you know, a level of intimacy, and a level of intellectual connection that just caused sparks. She's a really wonderful person, a perfect match for him. Very, very bright, very organized. Very supportive. Very interested in family and good family life. Bill and Melinda were wed in Hawaii on January 1st, 1994, the night before the ceremony Bill had arranged for a special serenade. He had Willie Nelson play the night before his wedding, and it was a total surprise. Bill got up and he said, you know, I really love Melinda, and I really want to sing her some songs tonight, and I don't sing that well, and so I asked a friend of mine to come and do a little singing for us, and so it was a big surprise. In Melinda, Bill found a partner who recognized his commitment to Microsoft and understood the professional demands of his business. But just months after his marriage, the bliss Bill shared with his family would turn to heartache. His mother, Mary, who had been his most devoted ally, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in the early morning of June 10th, 1994. Bill rushed home to be at his mother's side. When he came to the house that night, he'd been stopped by the police on the way, because he was speeding. And, of course, the policemen recognized him. It wasn't the first time he ever got stopped for speeding, by the way. And they looked at him and they said, what's going on? Because he said, you know, I was sitting there and the tears were just running down my face. And the policeman said, he said to the policeman, I'm sorry, he said, my mother just died. The policeman said, well, you go ahead, you go on home, but please slow down a little bit if you don't mind. So he was very deeply affected by his mother's death, as we all were, of course. In the years that followed, Bill picked up where his mother left off by creating a philanthropic foundation. Gates was a billionaire with enormous power. Microsoft was a dominating giant. But the government thought it was time to cut Bill Gates and his company down to size. By 1995, 39-year-old Bill Gates had settled into a new life as a married man. With his wife, Melinda, he took time off to explore the world from Africa to China. It seemed that Bill Gates now truly had it all. This is a man, a man so successful, his chauffeur is Ross Perot, ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome Bill Gates and the Bill Gates dancers. 1995 was also a banner year for Microsoft. Windows 95 was introduced to great fanfare. Tonight's show host, Jay Leno, kicked off the ballyhoo for the new software. Windows 95 is so easy, even a talk show host can figure it out. Clearly, Gates was still Microsoft's best salesman. But from now on, it wouldn't be all business for the boss. On April 26, 1996, Bill and Melinda welcomed their first child, a daughter, Jennifer. He just loves that little girl. It's just so marvelous to see. It's very gratifying to a father to see his own son to have the same feeling about children that I did about him and his sisters. So it's really gratifying. At the age of 42, Bill Gates was an icon of the American establishment. The richest man in the world with a personal net worth of more than $50 billion and a member of a power elite, which included President Bill Clinton, who shared his newfound enthusiasm for golf. The Gates style never meant flaunting wealth, but Bill spent considerable money for convenience and comfort. In 1997, Bill, his wife and his daughter moved into a $54 million dream house. Along with family and guest quarters, there is a library housing the Leonardo da Vinci notebook for which Gates paid more than $30 million. Even though the house serves many business functions, for the Gates family, it's just home. It's a remarkably family-friendly home, given what it is. I remember the first time going there after it was fully finished, walking through it and seeing, you know, little tykes cars in various places and things like that. I mean, this is not an antiseptic home that you feel afraid to touch anything or sit anywhere. While Gates may live in a high-tech palace, he has maintained the sense of public service Mary Gates gave all her children. He has committed himself to giving away the bulk of his fortune with the help of his wife and father through the William H. Gates Foundations. They've donated $200 million for computers and libraries around the country so others can experience the excitement Gates found as a child. Not everyone in this country can afford access to a computer and it just makes him realize that offering that kind of access to all citizens, be they 12 years old or 92 years old, will allow everyone to pursue that same excitement that he had as a youngster at Lakeside. Gates and his family have also donated an estimated $800 million for educational projects and medical research. Although he's been criticized for not spending more time and money on philanthropy, at 42, Gates is not ready to give up the helm at Microsoft. The industry keeps changing. I mean, it's the perfect game because it never ends. You can't sit down and relax. In fact, by 1997, Gates found that he was way behind in the exploding Internet market. A company called Netscape was dominating sales of Internet browsers, the software needed to access Internet websites. In some sense, I think the Internet gave Bill a whole new lease on life because it was something new to conquer. Gates set out to close the gap with Netscape by including Explorer, his browser, with every copy of the Windows operating system. It was viewed as a move to eliminate his chief rival. If Microsoft chooses to disadvantage Netscape or any other competitor, then the consumer doesn't get a fair choice. When the consumer doesn't get a fair choice, the market can't work effectively. Gates has been portrayed as a bully on some Internet websites. With his company controlling 95% of the world's PC operating systems, many users believe he has prevented better products from entering the marketplace. In March of 1998, Bill Gates was called to the Senate where he was once a page. Again, he was charged with running an illegal monopoly. In the electronic marketplace, Microsoft has the power today to exercise predatory and exclusionary control over the very means by which we access this Internet. It's a lot like General Motors having the ability to dictate what type of gasoline you put in your car or what Interstate you can drive on or even how you get on the Interstate. Despite the accusations, an earlier injunction preventing Microsoft from giving away its Internet browser with Windows 98 was revoked. But Bill Gates was still not out of the woods. In May of 1998, the Justice Department and 20 states filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft. The legal entanglements of this case may take years to unravel and the ongoing investigation has taken its toll on the youthful chairman of Microsoft. I think it's been a real punch to the gut for Bill. I've seen him be very emotional and depressed about this just as I would be. I mean, I've been audited once and that was pretty awful and I can imagine this is a lot worse than an IRS audit. Gates may be wounded by the attacks made on him and Microsoft but his business is still robust and expanding. In 1996, he ventured into television for the first time with a 24-hour cable news channel MSNBC and he now owns the world's largest archive of digitized photographs and art images. Gates has also been exploring the use with Hollywood moguls like Steven Spielberg. Bill Gates is still competing. Perhaps only history will be able to answer the question is Gates a monopoly builder who crushed the competition or simply a guy who built a better mousetrap? When the biographers and historians write the history of the 20th century, Bill Gates is going to go down as the best businessman of our century and Microsoft is one of the greatest companies of the 20th century. It's remarkable what this company has managed to do in so short a time. This is one of the great success stories of the 20th century.