IT Industry's "Gates Era" Becomes History

The founder of Microsoft, Gates, will officially retire on the evening of the 27th Beijing time. At the age of 52, Gates will end his full-time work at Microsoft and officially pass the baton. From this point forward, the "Gates era" in the global IT industry will become history. For Microsoft, this means an era is about to end, but for the world, it means gaining a full-time philanthropist with a net worth of $58 billion.

Afterward, Gates will only work one day a week at Microsoft, dedicating the rest of his time to being a philanthropist. Gates stated that the current time allocation will be reversed, shifting from spending 80% of his time at Microsoft and 20% at the foundation, to spending 20% of his time at Microsoft and devoting the remainder to charitable causes. However, he will still retain his own office. He mentioned that he would spend 2-3 days a month at the company and another 4-6 days writing, thinking, and researching various product projects, including the next generation of Office, natural user interfaces, and search. Gates expressed that he is very committed to search technology and aims to build the best search engine in the world.

Former Microsoft Vice President Sam Jadallah revealed that Gates had originally planned to leave Microsoft at the age of 60, but made the decision to "retire" at the age of 50. One of the key reasons might be that he found a suitable successor.