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[00:01.00]Our VOA listener question this week comes in an e-mail from Italy.
[00:07.68]Matteo Trotta asks how American Bill Gates became the richest person in the world.
[00:15.91]And,he asks about Mister Gates'recent legal problems.
[00:21.42]Bill Gates is the head of the Microsoft Corporation,near Seattle,Washington.
[00:29.37]Last week Microsoft celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary.
[00:35.82]Bill Gates is forty-four years old.
[00:39.92]He says he always believed that computers would become the most important tools ever invented.
[00:49.04]He became interested in computers when he was thirteen.
[00:54.81]After high school,Bill Gates attended Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts for one year.
[01:03.59]He left college and formed the Microsoft Company in Nineteen-Seventy-Five.
[01:10.95]He began the company with just three workers.
[01:15.13]Today,Microsoft has more than thirty-thousand employees around the world.
[01:22.99]In Nineteen-Eighty-One,the I-B-M Company began using Microsoft products as part of the operating system in all its computers.
[01:34.96]Microsoft now makes hundreds of products for the computer industry each year.
[01:41.99]As the Microsoft Company grew,so did the wealth of Bill Gates.
[01:48.59]His shares in the company are worth about fifty-five-thousand-million dollars.
[01:57.55]Mister Gates has promised to give away most of his money.
[02:02.91]He has given hundreds of millions of dollars to combat disease and improve health for people around the world.
[02:14.04]For example,he gave forty-five million dollars to the Harvard University Medical School.
[02:23.23]The money will be used to study a deadly form of the disease tuberculosis,which can not be cured by drugs.
[02:34.52]Bill Gates also says he is very interested in world health issues like AIDS and malaria.
[02:43.63]And he wants to do more to improve the health of mothers and children in developing countries.
[02:52.18]Many computer industry experts are not happy with Bill Gates and Microsoft.
[02:59.36]They say the company is trying to control the computer industry.
[03:06.05]Smaller computer companies say it is almost impossible to compete against Microsoft.
[03:14.75]The United States government brought legal action against Microsoft Corporation.
[03:21.62]The government says Microsoft uses unfair and illegal business dealings to compete against smaller companies.
[03:33.16]A judge ruled that Microsoft should be divided into two smaller companies.
[03:40.87]Bill Gates has appealed the decision.It could still be some time before a final decision is made about Microsoft.
