William Henry Gates III (born 28 October 1955) is an
American entrepreneur,
software executive,
philanthropist and
chairman of
Microsoft, the software company he founded with
Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of
CEO and
chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 9% of the
common stock. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the
personal computer revolution. Although he is widely admired, his business tactics have been criticized as anti-competitive and in some instances ruled as such in court. Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of
philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000. The annual
Forbes magazine's list of
The World's Billionaires has ranked Gates as the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2007, with recent estimates putting his net worth over $56 billion
USD. When family wealth is considered, his family ranks second behind the
Walton family, heirs of
Wal-Mart founder
Sam Walton. In July 2007,
Fortune magazine reported that the increase in value of Mexican billionaire
Carlos Slim's holdings of stock caused him to surpass Bill Gates as the world's richest man.
The following are images from various internet-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Postage stamp of Azerbaijan (2004): 35 Years of the Internet, 1969–2004 (from
History of the Internet)
Image 2Where the WEB was born (from
History of the World Wide Web)
Image 3The
NeXT Computer used by
Tim Berners-Lee at
CERN became the first Web server. (from
History of the World Wide Web)
Image 41997 advertisement in
State Magazine by the US
State Department Library for sessions introducing the then-unfamiliar Web (from
History of the World Wide Web)
Image 5Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019
Source:
Internet Systems Consortium. (from
History of the Internet)
Image 6T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992 (from
History of the Internet)
Image 7info.cern.ch, the first website, in 2025 (from
History of the World Wide Web)
Image 8The digital divide measured in terms of bandwidth is not closing, but fluctuating up and down. Gini coefficients for telecommunication capacity (in
kbit/s) among individuals worldwide (from
Internet access)
Image 11BBN Technologies TCP/IP Internet map of early 1986 (from
History of the Internet)
Image 13First Internet demonstration, linking the
ARPANET,
PRNET, and
SATNET on November 22, 1977 (from
History of the Internet)
Image 15Broadband affordability in 2011
This map presents an overview of broadband affordability, as the relationship between average yearly income per capita and the cost of a broadband subscription (data referring to 2011). Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute. (from
Internet access)
Image 17Satellite Internet access via
VSAT in Ghana (from
Internet access)
Image 18The "message block", designed by
Paul Baran in 1962 and refined in 1964, is the first proposal of a
data packet. (from
History of the Internet)
Image 22Internet Connectivity Access layer (from
Internet access)
Image 23Wi-Fi logo (from
Internet access)
Image 24The corridor where the World Wide Web was born, on the ground floor of building No. 1 at CERN (from
History of the World Wide Web)
Image 25Wi-Fi range diagram (from
Internet access)
Image 26Map of the
TCP/IP test network in February 1982 (from
History of the Internet)
