For more than 30 years he has roamed among us, a strange hybrid of Napoleon Dynamite and Vlad the Impaler. Nerdy yet ruthless, brilliant yet hobbled by blind spots regarding his company’s failings, Bill Gates leaves an indelible mark on everything digital. Yet on June 27, he’ll step down from his day-to-day duties at Microsoft to devote himself to philanthropic activities.

With snark in our hearts, we humbly offer ten of the most memorable moments of Bill’s career, with suggestions for suitable career moves he might consider if he decides to follow the logical path indicated by each milestone.

1. Windows 95 Starts Up (August 24, 1995)

We’ll probably never see another product launch like the one that propelled Windows 95 onto the world (and that’s surely a good thing). Even the pomp and circumstance surrounding the iPhone’s debut last year paled in comparison. The millions of dollars that Microsoft paid for the rights to the Rolling Stones’ "Start Me Up" was only the beginning of the estimated $300 million marketing juggernaut that accompanied this launch.

Among other excesses, the Empire State Building was bathed in Microsoft corporate colors, and playing fields in Britain were painted with the Windows 95 logo to make it visible from the air. The Redmond, Washington, campus of Microsoft was transformed into a carnival for the day, with food, jugglers, clowns, hot air balloons, a ferris wheel, and circus tents. And at the center of it all was Bill–grinning awkwardly in his blue Microsoft polo shirt and trying to sound casual as he engaged in teleprompter banter with The Tonight Show’s Jay Leno.

Bill’s best line: "Windows 95 is so easy even a talk-show host can figure it out."

Good thing he didn’t quit his day job (until now).

Second Career: Stand-up comic? Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

2. Turn On, Drop Out, Hack Code (January 1975)

It was a photo of the MITS Altair 8800 on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine that started it all. After Harvard classmate Paul Allen showed him the issue, Gates called MITS president Ed Roberts and convinced him that he and Allen had created a BASIC program for the Altair, even though neither had written a single line of code. After Roberts expressed interest, they worked feverishly to create the program in eight weeks.

Later that year, Gates dropped out of Harvard and moved to Albuquerque, where he took a job writing software for Roberts at $10 an hour. Eventually he made enough money from his BASIC royalties to buy himself a Porsche 911–with which he racked up multiple arrests for speeding and driving without a license.

Second Career: Driving instructor? Thanks, but we’ll just walk.

3. Bill Takes the Stand in Antitrust Case (August 27, 1998)

Windows has always had problems with memory management; evidently Gates does too. That’s certainly how it appeared when the CEO’s videotaped deposition in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial hit the Web. Gates’ reputation as a brilliant, detail-oriented control freak took a serious tumble as he peppered his testimony with "I don’t recall" (6 times), "I don’t remember" (14 times), and "I don’t know" (22 times). Gates quibbled about the meaning of words like "concerned" and "compete," engaging U.S. attorney David Boies in a circuitous dance of semantics that rivaled Abbott and Costello’s "Who’s on First?" routine for sheer loopiness. Excerpts from Gates’ video evoked chuckles from Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. But Gates would have the last laugh when a U.S. Court of Appeals overruled Jackson’s judgment against Microsoft three years later (see item #9).

Second Career: Expert witness? We object.

4. Bill Gates: PC World Centerfold Model (July 1987)

Yes, we are talking about that Bill Gates. No, he did not pose in the nude, praise Yahweh. He was wearing a dark blue suit, a lavender shirt, and a striped tie, instead of the usual lumpy sweater. And we are entirely to blame for this one because the Gates gatefold graced the July 1987 issue of PC World magazine, alongside an interview with the then-32-year-old software tycoon. It was the first centerfold the magazine ran, as well as (almost certainly) the last. Hey, we were all young and stupid in those days.

Second Career: Pin-up boy? Sure–the day after we all go blind.

5. A Gazillionaire Is Born (March 13, 1986)

The day Microsoft went public, Gates became an instant megamillionaire (actually a $234-millionaire, based on the IPO price). But it wasn’t until July 17, 1995, that Forbes magazine named him the richest featherless biped on the planet, with a net worth just shy of $13 billion. His wealth snowballed from there. During the height of dot-com madness, Gates’s paper fortune exceeded $100 billion, inspiring several Web sites devoted to measuring just how much money that was in real terms. No wonder people found it easy to believe the rumor that he’d give you $1000 just for responding to an e-mail (a classic Net hoax).

But instead of hoarding all the cash, Gates put his money where other people’s mouths are, establishing the William H. Gates III Foundation (later changed to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). After the bubble burst, Microsoft’s share price plummeted (as did every other tech stock), further deflating his bank balance. Now with a personal net worth of just $58 billion, Gates ranks third in the world behind Mexican telecom entrepreneur Carlos Slim Helu and Bill’s bridge-playing buddy, Warren Buffet.

Second Career: Quasi-retired philanthropist? This one he’s got down cold.

6. If It’s Cream Pie, This Must Be Belgium (February 4, 1998)

Gates was notorious for making pie-in-the-sky predictions for Microsoft products. So it probably shouldn’t have surprised him to receive a pie in the eye when he visited Brussels in February 1998. Gates got creamed as he was entering the Concert Noble Hall for an education conference sponsored by the Flemish government. Belgian anarchist Noël "the Pieman" Godin took credit for the aerial pastry, one in a series of tart-fueled attacks Godin has inflicted on notable people. Gates reportedly said later that the pie "wasn’t that tasty."

Second Career: Circus clown? Hey, Gates takes a pie in the face as well as Soupy Sales ever did. We think he has potential.

(Thanks to Belgian TV station een for the photo.)

7. Mr. Gates Builds His Dream House (1988 to 1995)

What do you do when you have more money than God? Build a house fit for a deity, of course. Gates’s mansion on the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle took seven years to complete and cost somewhere between $40 million and $100 million, depending on which source you accept. According to Fortune Magazine, "It was a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare: 40,000 square feet with several garages, a trampoline room, an indoor pool, a theater with a popcorn machine, and enough software and high-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game."

After their wedding, Melinda apparently toned down some of the house’s boy-toyishness. Still, as PBS’s Robert X. Cringely reported, visitors to the home were asked to wear electronic badges that allowed the house "to adjust climate, music, lighting–even the electronic artwork on the walls–to match their preferences as they move from room to room. And what happens when more than one person is in a room? The reality of active badges is that Bill Gates is still king. When Bill is in the room, his taste rules."

Second Career: Home builder? I think we’d rather just rent.

8. Bill Gets Hitched (January 1, 1994)

When you’re the world’s richest man you have to work double-time to hide from the public eye. So when Gates decided to marry former Microsoft product manager Melinda French, he organized the wedding on the tiny Hawaiian island of Lanai, booked every hotel room on the island, and rented every helicopter in the state to frustrate potential paparazzi.

The $1 million ceremony took place on the 12th tee of the Manele Bay Hotel golf course. On the guest list: best man Steve Ballmer, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Warren Buffet, and Washington Post doyenne Katherine Graham. The band? Singer Willie Nelson.

Second Career: Wedding planner? We like Bill’s style, but it’s too rich for our blood. We’ll stick with J-Lo.

9. Microsoft Remains Intact (June 28, 2001)

Bill & Co. dodged a major bullet when a federal appeals court overruled U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson’s decision in United States v. Microsoft, rescinding his order to split the company in two. The appellate court found that Microsoft had indeed acted as a monopoly in bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, but it ruled Jackson’s remedy too harsh. By then, Gates had already stepped down as Microsoft CEO, having handed the reins to Steve Ballmer in January 2000. Who knows? If Microsoft had been split, Gates might have found himself competing with his old college buddy Ballmer–and Yahoo might be trying to buy them instead.

Second Career: Yahoo employee? That’s something we’d like to see.

10. Bill Gets His Sheepskin (June 7, 2007)

More than 30 years after dropping out of Harvard, Bill finally got to flip his tassels. As a student, Gates was known to prefer poker and programming over attending classes, but in June 2007 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree after delivering the commencement address at his alma mater. Also receiving an honorary law degree that day: former Celtics star Bill Russell. So it was a good day for Bills all around.

Remember kids, stay in school. And if you can’t manage that, starting your own software empire and dominating the world for 30 years isn’t a bad fallback plan.

Second Career: Career counselor? One thing is certain: Nobody knows more about second careers than Bill. He’s a natural.

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Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen were all smiles in 1983 just after delivering MS Dos for the Tandy laptop and signing a contract to write MS-DOS for IBM.

1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen create a partnership called Micro-soft. It will grow into one of the largest U.S. corporations and place them among the world’s richest people.

Gates and Allen had been buddies and fellow Basic programmers at Lakeside School in Seattle. Allen graduated before Gates and enrolled at Washington State University.¹ They built a computer based on an Intel 8008 chip and used it to analyze traffic data for the Washington state highway department, doing business as Traf-O-Data.

Allen went to work for Honeywell in Boston, and Gates enrolled at Harvard University in nearby Cambridge. News in late 1974 of the first personal computer kit, the Altair 8800, excited them, but they knew they could improve its performance with Basic.

Allen spoke to Ed Roberts, president of Altair manufacturer MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), and sold him on the idea. Gates and Allen worked night and day to complete the first microcomputer Basic. Allen moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January 1975 to become director of software for MITS. Gates dropped out of his sophomore year at Harvard and joined Allen in Albuquerque.

Allen was 22; Gates was 19. Altair Basic was functioning by March. The "Micro-soft" partnership was sealed in April, but wouldn’t get its name for a few more months.

The fledgling company also created versions of Basic for the hot-selling Apple II and Radio Shack’s TRS-80.

Microsoft moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979. It incorporated in 1981, a few weeks before IBM introduced its personal computer with Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0.

The thriving young company moved again in 1986, this time to a new corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft stock went public in March 1986. Adjusting for splits, a share of that stock is worth almost 280 times its original value today (or more than 140 times, even accounting for inflation).

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It’s sad to hear about layoffs at companies like Yahoo. Right now it seems like a bad time to be laid off. I’m here to offer some hope.

I laid myself off in February 2002. Remember that time? It was far worse than what we’ve seen so far in the economic turmoil of 2008. It seemed like EVERYONE was laid off. There was even a Website, fuckedcompany.com, that tracked layoff after layoff. No good news, like the funding of Automattic, was coming out. 9/11 just happened and it seemed to be particularly dire.

But even in that tough time I found a job working at NEC. Here’s some tips I learned from that time.

1. Don’t get lazy. It might seem dire, but if you work it you WILL find a job. Some of my friends went on vacation, started drinking, or generally just hung out with their families. Those people took a LOT longer to find a job than the friends of mine who approached their time off with these tips.
2. Make sure you spend at least 30% of every day trying to find a job. That means working on your resume. Getting your cover letter finished. Sending out resumes. Searching the web for work. Networking. Etc. At first your time spent on these tasks should be a lot higher, but after weeks of watching the job sites for jobs and having your resume checked over by 10 of your friends you will naturally have more time to spend on other things.
3. Start a blog on the field you want to work in. Want to be a PHP programmer? Start a PHP blog and make sure you put world class stuff there. Link to EVERYONE who has a PHP blog. But that’s only the beginning.
4. Do things that will get you to be recognized as a world leader in the field you want to be in. Are you a programmer? Build something and put it up! Share your knowledge on your blog (give tips you’ve learned). Are you a program manager? Those jobs will be tougher to find, but you should demonstrate that you are a great manager of people as well as that you’re expert on the kinds of things you want to do. Demo! Demo! Demo!
5. Learn from Loic Le Meur. How did he get thousands of videos uploaded on Seesmic everyday? He networked. He visited tons of journalists, bloggers, executives. He is a consumate networker (you should watch him work the halls here at the World Economic Forum).
6. Do a video everyday on YouTube that demonstrates something you know. Loic does a video everyday. If you’re laid off you have absolutely no excuses. Get a cheap Web cam and get over to YouTube or Seesmic.
7. Show your friends your resume and cover letter. Don’t have any friends? Now is the time to make some. Call up some interesting people and ask for an informational interview. This is particularly key if you work at a big company and are getting laid off. I watched people at Microsoft get laid off and the ones who had tons of internal informational interviews got new jobs fast. The key is to meet people everyday and get in front of them. Not to beg for a job, but to do research on the industry you want to work in. You’d be amazed how showing some interest in your industry will get noticed itself.
8. Do the basics. I got my NEC job by sending a resume into a job that I found on Craig’s List. Yes, my blog helped me AFTER I got the interview, but I got the interview just by having a great cover letter and an interesting resume.
9. Don’t feel bad about taking government assistance. You’ll need it to pay your bills. I took it and it helped me get over that tough period.
10. Go to any job networking session you learn about. All of them were valuable to me, even though they didn’t necessarily bring me a job. Part of it is just feeling like you’re doing everything you can to get back on your feet. It’s an attitude thing. If you have an attitude that you’re going to work at this that will come across and will bring opportunities to you.
11. Go where the money is. If you are laid off and you haven’t sent your resume to Matt Mullenweg this morning, why not? People with new funding are the ones who are hiring. You want to work for them, so do what you can to at minimum get an informational interview. Why don’t you interview Matt for your blog? You never know, he just might give you an interview and that might lead to a discussion about how you could fit into his company. Even if it doesn’t, at least you get an interesting interview with someone in the industry who is seeing success. Other employers want to be like Matt, so if you have some insights to his success you might be surprised by how that gets you job interviews.
12. Take a little bit of time to work on family and health. You probably haven’t been paying enough attention to these two things. This is the time to start some healthy habits. Give up smoking, if you’re doing that. Drink less (the temptation will be to drink more, don’t give in). Get more exercise. Yes, I should take my own advice (I went for a long walk this morning in Davos and had fish last night).
13. Volunteer. Let’s say you are going to be out of work for six months. What could you do with six months of your time? Make sure you come away with it with a great project under your belt. Why not volunteer your time with a charity that could use your skills? Not only will you feel good about yourself, you’ll come away with job experience so you won’t have a hole in your resume (building an IT system for the Red Cross looks damn impressive — saying you were “on the beach” for six months does not). Plus you’ll make great friends with people who are trying to improve the world (they are typically the kinds of friends you should have anyway).
14. Make sure you take advantage of any help your former employer is offering. Sometimes they have retraining or other programs that might help you land an even better job.
15. See if you can keep coming into the office. This isn’t open to everyone, but at Userland I kept coming into work everyday after the paychecks stopped. That made me feel better, plus it gave me the ability to use phones, stay away from negative situations (do you really want to be around family all day, everyday, who might remind you that you need to find a job?) as well as give you a place to work hard on finding your new job.
16. Go to every business event you can attend. Can’t afford to get in? Me neither and I have a job! Hang out in the hallways. You never know who you might meet. At minimum you’ll get interesting interviews for your blog. Have your resumes ready.
17. Always have your suit ready. Some interviews happen fast “can you be here this afternoon?” The one who is ready will get the interview.

On your resume and cover letter. I found a TON of tips online for how to improve yours. Those tips work. Listen to them. My cover letter is what got me my interview (the guy who ran the group told me that later). My cover letter’s approach came off of tips I found online. Do Google searches for things like “how to write a great cover letter.”

Do you have any tips? Help out people by posting your own blogs and linking to them in my comment area here. Good luck and keep your head up. Lots of people have gotten fired. I’ve talked with quite a few CEOs here at the World Economic Forum and you’d be surprised at how many of them have had bad times in their careers.

I’ll be asking business leaders this week for their tips and will come back to this topic later in the week.

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Bill Gates and his wife Melinda head the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which aims to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty worldwide.

If innovation is what the Middle East is looking for, then today it will have a chance to hear from a man who defines it. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest and most influential software company, will speak to audiences in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Gates isn’t just the chairman of Microsoft, which he co-founded in 1975 with his friend Paul Allen. He has directed the company from its humble start in New Mexico into the Redmond-based giant that it is today. Gates help created several of Microsoft’s earliest creations and reportedly worked on products until the early 1990s.

Today Microsoft dominates the operating system market, and its collections of applications from Word to Excel have become industry standards. The company last year reported revenue of over $51 billion.

There have been problems along the way, too. Microsoft has been successfully sued for monopolistic practices both in the US and Europe, and the man at the helm has often been associated with the company’s marketing tactics. The company was fined over 497 million euros by the European Union in 2004. The fine was upheld in a 2007 ruling.

Since 2000, Gates, along with his wife Melinda, has focused heavily on philanthropy. Today they head the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which aims to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty world-wide.

The foundation has an endowment of $37.6 billion. Gates himself is worth an estimated over $56 billion, and was ranked as the world’s richest person from 1995 until 2007.

Last year, Gates announced that he would remove himself from the daily business of Microsoft in June of this year. He said he will focus mainly on philanthropy, although he will remain as the company’s chairman.

The following Q&A was conducted with local media via e-mail prior to Gates’ arrival in Dubai.

How much more can technology advance in the next decade – will it be at the same pace as the past 10 years?

People often ask me if we’re nearing the end of the digital revolution – if technology progress is at a point of diminishing returns and the personal computer has reached the apex of its development.

I believe the opposite is true. In many ways, the incredible advances of the past few decades have really just laid the foundation for much more profound change. In the years to come, hardware will continue to improve, often in dramatic and surprising ways.
Software will continue to advance as we develop new approaches to take advantage of multi-core processors, thread-level parallelism, expanded data storage and more pervasive broadband access. Together, hardware and software will be the catalyst for advances during the next 10 years that will far exceed the changes of the last 30 years.

Technology is increasingly changing the way people live – the way we share experiences and communicate with the people we care about; the way we preserve memories of past events; the way we access entertainment; the way we learn; and how we utilise healthcare. Simply put, technology is transforming the way we interact with each other and understand the world we live in.

More and more emphasis is being placed on developing emerging markets. What role will Microsoft play in the development of these regions?
When Paul Allen and I founded Microsoft more than 30 years ago, our dream was to put a computer on every desk and in every home. Today, about one billion people have a PC. That’s a large number, but it’s just a fraction of the world’s 6.6 billion people.
As we make technology more affordable and simpler to use, we will be able to extend the social and economic opportunities that come with better access to education, information, healthcare and global marketplaces.
As more and more of the world’s people participate in the knowledge economy, the result will be new innovations that make everyone’s lives richer, more connected, more productive and more fulfilling.

Because information technology and education are so critical to creating economic opportunities, Microsoft is deeply committed to improving technology access and fostering innovative teaching and learning methods.
In developing countries and in less prosperous communities where we do business, we believe in helping governments, schools and non-profit organisations equip students with the practical skills they need to thrive in today’s knowledge economy.
Through our citizenship programmes such as Unlimited Potential and Partners in Learning, Microsoft has provided software, training and curriculum to more than seven million teachers and 75 million students in over 100 countries.

Lately Microsoft has faced competition from companies like Apple, Google and Cisco, among others. How do you see the future of the market, and where do you think the line is for reaching sustainable and positive competition?
Software and high-tech has always been extremely competitive, which is what makes this industry so dynamic, fun and interesting. We’ve always faced tough competitors. In the early days it was Ashton-Tate and WordPerfect, later on it was Netscape and Novell, then IBM, Sun, Oracle, and now Google, Apple, and Cisco. In another five years the names will be different but the competition will be just as intense.

Our competitors do a lot of smart things, and that means that we have to constantly think about how to innovate beyond them. All of this innovation leads to incredible value being created for our customers – for businesses, governments, schools and consumers.

How do you see Arab countries playing a role in the development of technology?

The Gulf region plays a critical role in the global economy and it has great potential to contribute to the development of software and technology. To thrive in today’s global knowledge economy, developed and developing countries alike need to focus on building the productive capacities of their workforce. One way to boost productivity is through investments in information and communications technology.

Even greater competitive advantage can come from strengthening workforce skills through investments in education. In an increasingly globalised economy, knowledge and skills are the key differentiators of nations as well as individuals.

In the US, we’ve been fortunate to benefit from access to a deep pool of scientists and engineers trained in US universities. Our economic leadership has always been driven by the ability of American companies to turn breakthrough innovations – the internet, fibre optics, genomics, and much more – into thriving businesses that create high-paying jobs for millions of people.

The success of high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley has been driven by their connection and proximity to great research universities. Now we see this being replicated in places like China and India.
I commend the many Gulf leaders who have had the foresight to invest in the education of their citizens. Focus on the needs, interests and dreams of young people because they hold the keys to the economic and social future of every nation.

What advice would you give to the millions of people who want to be the next Bill Gates?

One of the most important changes of the last 30 years is that digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker. That’s true for everyone from the retail store worker who uses a handheld scanner to track inventory to the CEO who uses business intelligence software to analyse critical market trends.
So, if you look at how progress is made and where competitive advantage is created, there’s no doubt that the ability to use software tools effectively is critical to succeeding in today’s global knowledge economy.

Beyond that, however, I don’t think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in math and science. If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade – whether it’s cool things like portable music devices and video game, or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology – they all come from the realm of science and engineering.

Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too. A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
This isn’t true at all. Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books. It’s great to read widely about a broad range of subjects. Of course today, it’s far easier to go online and find information about any topic that interests you. Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue.

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Bill Gates is one of the most recognized people around the globe—as cofounder of Microsoft, one of the world’s richest people and now as perhaps the globe’s most influential philanthropist. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the choices he and his wife, Melinda, make with their foundation affect the lives of millions of people. He’s impressive, he’s inspirational—and for most people, he’s unreachable. But Gates has agreed to take questions from NEWSWEEK readers in this exclusive Web forum. Please submit your questions by Sept. 28; we’ll publish the answers to selected questions on Oct. 10.
Click here to send your question to Gates

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A look at Microsoft History – The Seventies

1975
January 1. The MITS Altair 8800 appears on the cover of Popular Electronics, inspiring Paul Allen and Bill Gates to develop a BASIC language for the Altair.
February 1. Bill Gates and Paul Allen sell BASIC, the first computer language program for a personal computer, to Microsoft’s first customer, MITS of Albuquerque, NM.
March 1. Paul Allen joins MITS as director of software.
April 7. “Altair BASIC?Up and Running,” declares the headline of the first edition of MITS Computer Notes.
July 1. BASIC officially ships as version 2.0 in both 4K and 8K editions.

1976
February 3. Bill Gates is one of the first programmers to raise the issue of software piracy. In “An Open Letter to Hobbyists,” first published in MITS Computer Notes, Gates accuses hobbyists of stealing software and thus preventing “…good software from being written.” He prophetically concludes with the line, “…Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.”
March 27. Bill Gates gives the opening address at the First Annual World Altair Computer Convention, held in Albuquerque.
November 1. Paul Allen resigns from MITS to join Microsoft full time.
November 26. The trade name Microsoft is registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.

1977
February 3. Paul Allen and Bill Gates execute an official partnership agreement.
July 1. FORTRAN-80, Microsoft’s second language product, is available.

1978
November 1. Microsoft establishes its first international sales office in Japan, ASCII Microsoft.
December 31. Microsoft’s year-end sales exceed $1 million.

1979
January 1. Microsoft moves its offices to Bellevue, WA, from Albuquerque.

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A look at Microsoft History – The Eighties

While some of us were wearing tube socks and listening to “Wham” others were running multi-billionaire companies like Microsoft.  Here’s a look back at the 1980′s – Microsoft style.

1980  
June 11. Steve Ballmer joins Microsoft.

1981 
June 25. Microsoft reorganizes into a privately held corporation with Bill Gates as president and chairman of the board and Paul Allen as executive vice president. Microsoft becomes Microsoft, Inc., an incorporated business in the State of Washington.
August 12. IBM introduces its Personal Computer, which uses Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system, Microsoft® MS-DOS® version 1.0, plus Microsoft BASIC, Microsoft COBOL, Microsoft Pascal, and other Microsoft products.

1982
March 24. Microsoft U.K. Ltd. (United Kingdom) is incorporated.
June 28. Microsoft announces a new corporate logo, new packaging, and a comprehensive set of retail dealer support materials.

1983
February 18. Paul Allen resigns as Microsoft’s executive vice president, but remains on the Board of Directors.
May 2. Microsoft introduces the Microsoft Mouse.
September 29. Microsoft introduces Word for MS-DOS 1.00.
November 10. Microsoft unveils Microsoft Windows®, an extension of the MS-DOS operating system that provides a graphical operating environment. The first retail version of Windows would not ship until November 1985.

1984
January 24. Microsoft ships BASIC and Multiplan simultaneously with the introduction of the Macintosh, becoming a leader in developing software for Apple computers.
July 11. Microsoft Press introduces its first two titles: Cary Lu’s The Apple Macintosh Book and Peter Norton’s Exploring the IBM PC the Home Computer.

1985
August 12. Microsoft celebrates its 10th anniversary with Fiscal Year 1985 sales figures of $140 million.
September 3. Microsoft selects the Republic of Ireland as the site of its first production facility outside of the United States to produce software products to be sold in the European market. November 20. Microsoft ships the retail version of Microsoft Windows.

1986
February 26. Microsoft moves to a new corporate campus in Redmond, WA.
March 13. Microsoft stock goes public at $21 per share, rising to $28 per share by the end of the first trading day and raising $61 million.

1987
April 2. Microsoft and IBM announce OS/2. This is the first product to be announced as a result of the Joint Development Agreement between Microsoft and IBM in August 1985.
September 8. Microsoft ships its first CD-ROM application, Microsoft Bookshelf, a collection of 10 of the most popular and useful reference works on a single compact disc.

1988
January 13. Microsoft and Ashton-Tate announce Microsoft SQL Server™, relational database server software for Local Area Networks (LANs) based on a relational database management system licensed from Sybase.

1989
August 1. Microsoft announces Office, the first general business software for Macintosh systems available on CD-ROM.
November 13. Microsoft and IBM broaden the scope of their development agreement by agreeing to jointly develop a consistent, full range of systems software offerings for the 1990s. These software offerings will include enhancements to MS-DOS, Microsoft OS/2, and Microsoft LAN software and are compatible with the Intel 386 and 486 microprocessors.
December 27. Microsoft announces that Jon Shirley will retire as president and chief operating officer on June 30, 1990. Shirley, who has been president since August 1983, will continue to play a role in the management of the company as a member of the Board of Directors and as a consultant for strategic projects. 

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