Bill Gates announces retirement plans

Last week, Bill Gates announced that he would reduce his role at Microsoft to focus on his philanthropy work.

Last week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, announced his retirement plans. Gates will step down from the day to day responsibilities of Microsoft. Gates, 50, would now concentrate solely on his charitable foundation that provides funding for global health and education projects. He would scale down his responsibilities for software strategy and gradually reduce his involvement in the company by July 2008. Gates told Newsweek, "It's a personal choice I made. Clearly if I didn't have the foundation I would be staying here full time and working super, super hard because I love working on software. But I was feeling an increased desire to spend more time on foundation work."

"It was always clear that that day would come at some point. It's actually pretty rare for somebody to have two things to do that they love and feel like they're important and challenging," he added. 

The technology virtuoso started Microsoft some 30 years ago and built it into the world’s biggest software company. 

Gates started his philanthropic work in 2000 when he created the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has put in $29 billion in the foundation. As part of his retirement plans, he will be more involved in taking on hunger and major illnesses in poorer countries. Last year, Time magazine named Bill and Melinda Gates along with rock star Bono as Persons of the Year for their philanthropic work.

The Gates Foundation has also focused on education reform and has funded many innovative schools in the US. 

Although Gates will diminish his responsibilities at Microsoft, he would continue to be the chairman of Microsoft for the rest of his life. Many feel that Gates' move has come at a dangerous time for Microsoft. The company is increasingly facing stiff competition from Internet majors such as Google. Microsoft has often been accused of not reinventing itself regularly the way Google does. All eyes will be on Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer now. He will have to find a way to undo setbacks that have caused the company's shares to plummet by 60% since that time he became CEO.

Microsoft set to issue a dozen software patches

Microsoft releases Antigen email server antidote

Windows Vista may eat your laptop batteries away

Windows flaw may hack applications, start Denial of service attack

Microsoft, Adobe clash over PDF format usage in Office 2007

Microsoft, NTT DoCoMo and Toshiba to develop iPod rival

Microsoft to release Visual System Team Edition for the Database Professional

Windows Live Onecare from Microsoft

Microsoft releases Wireless Desktop for Mac and mouse

MS Office Ultimate edition coming

Microsoft launches Vista test version Beta 2