FOUR MEN LOOM LARGE IN MICROSOFT HISTORY

Microsoft was shaped by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella over the course of the last half-century in the male-dominated tech world.

- GLENN CHAPMAN

Friends since childhood in Seattle, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in 1975 with a stated goal of putting a computer in every office and home.

GATES

Born William Henry Gates III in 1955 in Seattle, he began writing software programs while a 13-year-old schoolboy.

Gates dropped out of Harvard in his junior year to start Microsoft with Allen.

The childhood friends created MS-DOS operating system, since renamed Windows, which went on to dominate office work.

Gates built a reputation as a formidable and sometimes ruthless leader.

Critics argue he unfairly wielded Microsoft's clout in the market, and the US pressed a winning antitrust case against the company in the late 1990s.

In 2000, Gates ceded the CEO job to Ballmer, whom he befriended while the two were students at Harvard.

Gates chose to devote himself to a charitable foundation he established with his then-wife, Melinda.

He resigned from Microsoft's board of directors in 2020 shortly after the firm acknowledged the existence of an "intimate" relationship with an employee in the past.

The following year, the couple divorced. Melinda Gates faulted him for his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was found guilty of sexually exploiting underage girls.