Over the course of only a handful of decades, society's interconnectivity through tech has grown exponentially. Giving way to investors in Silicon Valley as well as quickly changing tech companies to rise and fall as a result. Routinely remaining on top, Bill Gates’s garage startup Microsoft not only came to dominate the PC market but also packed an unmatched amount of software inside. Due to his forward thinking ingenuity, brilliant business strategies and proposals that paved the way for future tech, and his growing humanitarian efforts, Bill Gates should be included in Atlantic Monthly’s Top 100 Most Influential Americans List. Consistently running into trouble at a young age, Bills exceptional knowledge of computers during his teenage …show more content…
Using new and unorthodox strategies to run his company like no other, Gates’s brilliant business approach resulted in even more success. In an effort to fully comprehend just how large Microsoft had become the periodical Microsoft After Gates. (And Bill After Microsoft.) states, “start-ups would abandon business plans if they felt that Microsoft was thinking of competing in their space.” Possessing an unholy amount of power like this speaks volumes on the colossal impact any proposal could have on the global market. As aforementioned, Gates reigned supreme, he was the captain of this tech ship that paved the way for innovation in both a daily driven work computer and the groundbreaking software included. “By late 1996, over 90 percent of all PCs had a Microsoft operating system - usually a form of windows - and most had Microsoft applications.” (“Bill Gates.”) Such success was unparalleled to the numbers of computing companies prior. Bypassing any and all opportunities to halt progress in an effort to make a quick profit is hardly one of the many practices he enacted. This same document tells that “Gates’s competitive drive and fierce desire to win has made him a powerful force in business but has also consumed much of his personal life.” (“Bill Gates.”) Hard work and large efforts obviously come at a toll except in the case of Gates, his endeavours …show more content…
All humanitarian aid The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided qualifies both Bill and his wife Melinda to go down as some of history's greatest philanthropist due to their revolutionary contributions, expanded outreach and drive to produce results. Having organized countless donations and grants, one of the first and most impactful involved revamping public libraries. Many applaud “Bill and Melinda Gates’s generous gesture of $200 million in cash, matched by Microsoft’s $200 million in software for libraries” (Martin, Patricia). At this time, Bill Gates was still running Microsoft and although a majority of the public had access to the internet, rural locations did not. Providing the world with the tools to advance as a society meant that anyone living by a library possessed this luxury. With regards to this initiative, Alabama Public Library Services Director Rebecca Mitchell states that “he brought us kicking and screaming into the computer age”(Kniffel, Leonard). Providing this infrastructure has spurred economic growth in previously desolate areas, offering more jobs in new locations as well as inside the libraries affected. Building on his reputation in that it parallels the actions of Andrew Carnegie whose considerations to libraries impacted the youth in a multitude of ways. This contribution to knowledge has also educated the public