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Bill Gates punches clock for last time

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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates steps down from his daily duties from the company he co-founded 33 years ago. Gates will devote more time to the $29.1 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the company said. A Harvard drop-out himself, he is seen addressing the 2007 Harvard University Commencement Exercises in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 7, 2007. (UPI Photo/Matthew Healey/FILES) 
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Published: June 27, 2008 at 9:10 AM
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REDMOND, Wash., June 27 (UPI) -- Friday is the last day at work at Microsoft for Bill Gates, one of the must iconic success stories in the history of the U.S. business world.

Gates, a Harvard University drop-out who co-founded Microsoft Corp. 33 years ago, will remain chairman of the Microsoft board and its largest shareholder but is stepping away from his workaday duties.

Gates will devote more time to the $29.1 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the company said.

Gates, 50, who began Microsoft in 1975, recognized the value of software platforms as a product separate from computer hardware, The New York Times reported Friday.

He leaves Microsoft in a dominant position as a developer of software but at a time when the future of technology is betting heavily on Internet revenues, which Google dominates.

Google earns about 60 percent of the Internet market revenue, Yahoo! Inc. about 20 percent and Microsoft less than 10 percent, the Times reported.

"The threat to any technology company is to miss one of the big shifts in technology and Microsoft missed the transition," David Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard business school, told the Times.

Topics: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates
© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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