Gates legacy is powerful, polarizing

摘要

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates formally entered the computer business in 1975 as a gangly geek; later this month he will semi-exit as an industry luminary leaving behind a billion-dollar juggernaut and a legacy of software, personal computing, innovation, and tough and sometimes unfair competition. Gates, who will remain as Microsoft chairman while devoting most of his time to working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is synonymous with Windows and the monumental impact it and other software products made in delivering computing to the masses. Competitors, colleagues and industry observers point to Gates' intellect and passion, which pushed an industry from infancy to maturity but also revealed an arrogance and competitive spirit that at times had little tolerance for other winners, such as Novell, Netscape, open source and Google. Along the way there also were famous stumbles followed by famous recoveries, such as Gates' 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" memo that declared the Internet was "the most important single development" since the IBM PC - at a time when Silicon Valley was well across that bridge already