Gates started his pathway of success after he called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) when learning about Altair 8800 from the 1975 issue magazine, Popular Electronics. He called MITS to persuade them that his group of software makers were working on a BASIC platform for their new personal computer product. Gates and Allen did not have the Altair 8800 or the new BASIC code, but they just wanted to sell interest to the company of hiring them. The president of MITS eventually agreed to see the demo and after a few weeks Gates had made an imitation of what would soon be Altair's BASIC code simply called Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen made a successful deal with MITs and got hired to work there. Their name in their first office was called "Micro-Soft" in their first office, but the name soon was changed to "Microsoft" at their new office.
At this point Gates was on a leave to work on computer software, but that leave was permanent because he never went back to Harvard to finish his studies.
Many people were interested in the Altair BASIC that some companies would try to make copies of the newly made software that was leaked. This made Gates mad so he wrote a letter to the computer hobbyists demanding ones that had the leaked software had to pay for it. Since the software was already leaked, Microsoft could only insist on the people paying the fee suggested. In 1976, Microsoft became independent from MITS and moved their office headquarters from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington in 1979. Gates and Allen had gained many employees all responsible for parts of the company, but Gates between the both of them oversaw everything and coded also.
IBM had wanted to be in a partnership with Microsoft for them to code their software and split profits of the product. The problem was that IBM did not have an operating system for the PC they were trying to make so Gates insisted making a deal with Digital Research (DRI) before coming to Microsoft. The deal went poorly, nothing worked out so then Microsoft refered them to Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a company that made a similar operating system to that of DRI. Microsoft had made a deal with SCP, soon becoming the owner of the 86-DOS.
Microsoft made the operating system adaptable for PC, calling it PC-DOS and sold it to IBM for a price of $50,000.
This deal exchange did not give them everything. Gates kept the copyright for Microsoft, afraid that seller would make copies of his machine. The press got onto it and started to question Gates if it was his design. The world soon knew it was Gates' computer, putting him President company.
Microsoft Windows came out on November 20, 1985. During the same year Microsoft made a deal with their partner company IBM to make OS/2 but the partership soon demolished when each company had different opinions of how the operating system should be made.
In the very beginning Gates was a hardworking software developer, coding almost everything that had gone throught the company. As years went on, Gates slowly became distant of coding and of his employees. His main roles became the executive/manager and the product strategist.
On June 15, 2006, Gates wanted to dedicate more of his time to philantropy so he split his jobs to two employees. Ray Ozzie took over management and Craig Mundie took over product strategy.
Microsoft spent 21 years in antitrust battles against the U.S government. The long fight caused this case to be one of the biggest monopoly wars in the country. During the case, Gates made statements of him being unclear of the claims presented to him. The result of the court case was Gates was pleaded guilty and Microsoft was ruled commitment of monopolization and blocking competition of competitors. This ruling was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.