Bill Gates has stepped down as chief software architect at Microsoft Corp. and will slowly transition out of the day-to-day role at the company by July 2008 in order to spend more time working on global health and education at his private foundation. Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft chairman and advise on key development projects after July 2008, the company said in a statement. Gates, 50, started Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT – News) with his childhood friend, Paul Allen, in 1975, and guided the company as it grew into the world’s largest software maker. The one-time Harvard University dropout is now a billionaire many times over who is regularly ranked as the world’s richest man. He is known around the world and is in many ways the face of the U.S. technology industry. In recent years, Gates has moved away from day-to-day operations at the company, spending more time with his philanthropic efforts at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he founded with his wife, Melinda, in 2000. The Seattle-based foundation has assets of more than $29 billion. Microsoft immediately moved to fill the gap left by Gates. The company said Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie would step into the role of chief software architect. Ozzie will work "side by side" with Gates on the Redmond company’s technical architecture "to ensure a smooth transition," the company said. Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie will become the company’s new chief research and strategy officer and will also work closely with Gates on research and incubation efforts. "This was a hard decision for me," Gates said in a statement. "I’m very lucky to have two passions that I feel are so important and so challenging. As I prepare for this change, I firmly believe the road ahead of Microsoft is as bright as ever." McAdams Wright Ragen Inc. analyst Paul Latta called the Gates transition "a very symbolic, perhaps historic, announcement." "He’s such a public figure, not only the CEO of the most highly valued company in the world but he’s also the founder of that company and does represent to some extent what’s possible in America," Latta said.
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