On May 4, Beijing time, super-rich Bill Gates and his wife Melinda announced the news of their divorce.
They jointly said, “After a long period of reflection on our relationship, we have decided to end our marriage. Over the past 27 years, we have raised three children together and built a foundation, but now staying married no longer allows us to continue to advance.”
After this divorce statement was published on the Internet, netizens also flirted with the fact that the reasons for the divorce of the rich and powerful are unimaginably high for the average person.
Looking back at the 27 years of marriage between Bill Gates and Melinda, although the outside world has been to them as a divine couple, but Melinda has publicly said “our marriage is incredibly difficult, I have had a lot of torment in the marriage sad moments, I always wonder, I can still hold on?”
A seemingly perfect marriage is actually full of crises
Bill Gates and Melinda’s love affair was a bit of a “dominatrix in love with me” kind of thing.
It was in 1987 when 22-year-old Melinda joined Microsoft as a marketing executive after earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science, economics and an MBA.
At this time, 31-year-old Bill Gates has been founding Microsoft for 11 years, he has not yet become the world’s richest man, but also has long been the computer industry’s financial talent.
They met at a company party, and because they were both late to the party, they coincidentally sat at two seats next to each other at the same table.
This encounter left Bill and Melinda with a deep impression of each other, and Melinda sensed that Bill had a crush on her.
Soon after, they met again in the parking lot of the company, so they dated and then naturally fell in love.
In the seventh year of their relationship, Bill Gates, 38, and Melinda, 29, were married in Hawaii, USA.
After the wedding, they moved into a huge villa that took seven years to build, and Melinda chose to become a housewife in order to take better care of her family.
They had three children, and Bill Gates’ company grew day by day.
By 1995, Bill Gates had topped the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, with a personal fortune of $12.9 billion, annual sales revenue of $5.9 billion and 17,801 employees.
It is reasonable to say that Melinda, who has become the richest wife in the world, should live a happy life, but her real married life seems to have hidden problems everywhere.
First of all, Melinda is a new woman who pursues gender equality to the utmost, but Bill Gates’ identity predestines him to be unable to participate too much in family chores and children’s companionship, so Bill Gates’ neglect of home and family for a long time has become the biggest conflict between them.
Second, Bill Gates has been in contact with his lover after marriage
In addition, Bill Gates’ affair is also an unspoken secret between them.
Perhaps for Bill Gates, his wife Melinda is only his most suitable life partner, another woman named Wainbright is the love of his life.
Before getting married to Melinda, Bill Gates and Wainbright were lovers.
Wainbright is 9 years older than Bill Gates, and she is also a strong woman in the field of computer, because the same field of work and interests, Bill Gates is very obsessed with Wainbright love.
Not only that, Wainbright’s computer knowledge also provided strong help and guidance for Bill Gates’ career development.
So in the process of getting along, Bill Gates trusts Wainbright more than his mother at one time.
He was like a young boy in love, imagining all kinds of wonderful things when he and Wainbright started a family.
But Bill Gates’ mother was strongly against their relationship, because in Bill Gates’ mother’s opinion, Wainbright was 9 years older than Bill Gates, which would definitely affect the company’s image and was not conducive to their marital stability.
So under the consideration of various practical factors, Bill Gates and Wainbright dismissed the idea of marriage and agreed that it was enough for them to love each other properly!
Later when Bill Gates and Melinda got married, he told his wife-to-be about his relationship with Wainbright, and he was honest enough to say “Wainbright used to be my lover, is now my good friend, and will be my lover for the rest of my life, so please allow me to take one week a year to spend alone with Wainbright.”
And Melinda agreed to this request of Bill Gates at that time, so after the marriage, Bill Gates and Wainbright also maintained a long-term ambiguous relationship.
Bill Gates then did two more things to express his feelings for Wainbright, first, he made it clear to Wainbright that “of all the women I have ever known, the only one who is perfectly great and knows me at the same time is you, except for my mother.”
Second, he hung Wainbright’s portrait in his office.
I wonder how Melinda felt when she saw this!
Three, Bill Gates lost $8 billion because of his mistress
After the end of the relationship with Wainbright, there was a woman named Stefania in Bill Gates’ life.
Stefania is a female employee of Bill Gates’ company at the age of 25, which is a good time to be young and beautiful.
Just like the clichéd “story” between a president and his secretary in a TV show, Bill Gates developed Stefania into his secret lover.
When the love was so passionate, Bill Gates even let Stefania attend confidential company meetings together, so Stefania also knew some of the secrets inside Microsoft.
Although Bill Gates loved his girlfriend with passion and forgetfulness, Stefania had a regular boyfriend at the time, and for Bill Gates’ love attack, Stefania did not want to agree but did not dare to refuse.
But over time, Bill Gates’ desire to control Stefania became even stronger, and after thinking about it, Stefania made a move that was both bold and helpless.
At this time is 1999, the United States burst two peach news events: one is the former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Lewinsky scandal led to Bill Clinton almost lost the presidency; the second is Bill Gates’ lover Stefania testified in court to identify Microsoft violated the U.S. antitrust laws, so that Microsoft is in the biggest crisis since the establishment of the company.
Because the evidence provided by Stephanie in court was strong enough and sufficient, Microsoft’s share price not only dropped sharply, but also was sold in large quantities, and Microsoft was almost split in two.
In this crisis, Bill Gates’ personal wealth lost up to $8 billion (about 51.7 billion yuan).
This is a huge loss.
Such a big loss, also considered Bill Gates for their own philandering, pay a huge amount of “tuition” it!
Living with such a man for 27 years, for Melinda, who has always been committed to the pursuit of equality between husband and wife, may really be a bitter pill to swallow!
So even though Bill Gates is the world’s super-rich, Melinda still resolutely filed for divorce.
Now that her three children have grown up, she has no need to worry or worry about them, and she has every reason to live the rest of her life.
But how she and Bill Gates will divide their $130 billion (about 840 billion yuan) in joint assets has become the biggest question mark.
Although Melinda said in the divorce petition that she did not need any support from the other party, Bill Gates and Melinda did not sign any agreement before the marriage, which means that from a legal point of view Melinda is entitled to half of Bill Gates’ wealth.
It may not take long for Melinda to become the richest woman in the world.
At the age of 57, Melinda will be the richest woman in the world, and in many years, Melinda’s story will be a good one!
It was also reported that Bill Gates was exposed to a history of philandering, chasing after a beautiful 25-year-old female subordinate who had a boyfriend and didn’t care, still madly pursued.
On May 4, 2021, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates announced their divorce.
The two have been married for 27 years, and at the same time said that they “can no longer let each other grow and progress, so choose to end the marriage”.
I can only say that poverty has limited my imagination, people even divorce reasons are so high-minded.
With the east wind of Bill Gates’ divorce, let’s take a look at the “plundered life” and the “powerful backing group” behind it, and understand the mystery of his becoming the richest man in the world.
I. “Winning in the womb” of Bill Gates
Bill Gates, born in Seattle in October 1955, is a little boy who “won in the womb”.
Bill Gates’ maternal grandfather, a former president of a national bank, had powerful connections and wealth.
Bill Gates’ mother, Mary Gates, became a director of the University of Washington, a director of a bank, and the president of United Way International, a beautiful, intelligent, and resourceful woman.
With such a maternal grandfather’s family, Bill Gates’ father was not bad either, being an excellent lawyer.
In the early days of Bill Gates’ business, his father provided a lot of legal help before giving Bill Gates the capital to start his business.
After Bill Gates made his fortune, his father set up the “Gates Law Firm”, which is one of the top ten law firms in the world.
As a young boy who “won in the womb”, Bill Gates did not know it as a child and liked to live in his own world.
Bill Gates was very active and was constantly wiggling around in his cradle, not stopping for a moment.
When he was a little older, Bill Gates added problems such as sloppiness, dawdling and bad temper, which often made the family anxious and angry.
Bill Gates’ room was always in a mess; the socks on his feet were often inconsistent in color; sometimes he even hung his shoes around his neck, enjoying himself and not listening to his parents.
After school, Bill Gates was obsessed with reading books, seldom talking, not contacting people, not going out for days at a time, just to understand the contents of a book.
If his mother disciplined him too much, he would yell at her, sometimes even ranting and swearing.
The father, of course, would not ignore it, after taking a lockdown, throwing cold water, after the war of words, or defeated, decided to take his son to see a psychiatrist.
After the doctor’s diagnosis, Bill Gates was diagnosed with “autism”, the only way to treat it is to get in touch with people, learn to communicate with people, and slowly open his heart.
So the lawyer’s father would bring Bill Gates to any party or charity event; sometimes he would be a spectator, sometimes he would be a greeter; in general, he would not be left idle.
His mother took him to family gatherings, community events, charity auctions, summer camps, etc., slowly curing Bill Gates of his autism.
Despite being cured of autism, Bill Gates’ personality is still somewhat “two-faced”.
His mind is intelligent, with abundant energy and keen judgment; but the words he spits out, occasionally vulgar and unreasonable, arrogant and indifferent, have a lot to do with the character he was raised with as a child.
Bill Gates is very smart, following his father to attend the side meetings, he can remember the legal terms of the day; following his mother to charity events, he can know how to use charity to achieve maximum benefit.
As he himself said: I am doing charity, but charity in my eyes is also a business.
Perhaps, this is the secret of his later becoming the “world’s best”.
Bill Gates is a child, but also a schoolmaster
Bill Gates attends one of Seattle’s top private schools for boys, which supports children’s interests and welcomes their own opinions.
Paul Allen is one of the rich and famous students with a strong background.
Paul Allen was Bill Gates’s schoolmate, and it is said that the two did not cross paths, but the two had a common hobby of “researching computers”, and they became good friends.
In 1968, at the age of 13, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, eyeing the school’s PDP-10 computer, the two began to learn programming, but also began to accompany the “rich life road”.
Soon after, the two found a vulnerability in the PDP-10 computer software, but also wrote a special report to the computer company.
After verification, the company listened to the two children’s views, but also gave them a substantial reward.
When Bill Gates was 15 years old, he wrote a class schedule scheduling software for his school and was also paid $4,200.
Although he enjoyed fiddling with computers, Bill Gates also always had top grades.
In 1973, Bill Gates entered Harvard University with a score of 10 points below perfect and met another computer whiz: Steve Powellmer.
Steve Powellmer is also a rich boy, has been a math competition master, not only got the Harvard University math department scholarship, but also with a perfect score to enter Harvard, than the good brother Bill Gates are bull X.
Many years later, Bill Gates invited Steve Powellmer to join the incubator of Microsoft, the two of them all the way to upgrade the fight, played the unrivaled Microsoft mountain.
Bill Gates reigned as the world’s richest man for 13 years, and Steve Powellmer was not bad, having been ranked 6th, 9th and 14th for many years, also a legendary figure.
From his parents to his classmates, Bill Gates has been a great success, with a strong “backing group” standing behind him, which has also contributed to his brilliant life.
Bill Gates’ first “plunder”
When Bill Gates contacted with his new friend Steve Powellmer, he did not forget his old friend Paul Allen.
At that time, Paul Allen was working as a programmer in a computer company called “Sweetwell” in Boston, and he often had access to new news in the industry and met with Bill Gates from time to time.
In the spring of 1975, the magazine Popular Electronics said that a guy named Ed Roberts had invented an Altair 8080 microcomputer.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen immediately saw a business opportunity and immediately called Ed Roberts and said, “We can develop the Basic language (“Beginner’s Common Symbolic Instruction Code”) for the Altair.”
At first, Ed Roberts didn’t believe the two brats, but after just 32 days, Bill Gates and Paul Allen ported the Basic language to the PC and became Ed Roberts’ partners.
Ed Roberts ran a company called MITS, which had long been in trouble and managed to turn around because of Bill Gates and Paul’s software.
However, when signing the contract with MITS, Bill Gates kept an eye out.
He did not sell the software to MITS, but marked “10 years, MITS can use and transfer the Basic and source code worldwide”.
The deal made Bill Gates and Paul Allen $180,000, and their fame, and the development of the Basic language also became famous.
With the money, Bill Gates’ back was also hardened, and he and Paul Allen then co-founded Microsoft, which became the world’s pioneer in PC software development.
Unexpectedly, Ed Roberts was not good at business, and there was a huge personnel fluctuation within MITS, and he had to sell the company.
The buying company argued that “Bill Gates’ Basic language was included in the deal”, but Bill Gates thought otherwise, and the two finally went to arbitration.
Bill Gates hired his father and his legal team, and won the case with a lot of fighting, gaining fame and $180,000 and not losing his software.
After the lawsuit, Ed Roberts has been unconvinced that “they were betrayed, when it was clear that the ownership of the software, but now it has become the right to use, really bad luck”!
Although Bill Gates and MITS eventually turned against each other, but it is undeniable that MITS laid the continental position of Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s industry, allowing them to dig the first bucket of gold in life.
Fourth, because of his mother’s introduction, and IBM reached cooperation
After regaining the right to use the Basic language, Bill Gates bid $500 and began to sell it at an explicit price.
However, the Basic program was not written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, but invented by the great programmer Gary Kildare.
Gary Kildare was a thoughtful programmer who wrote the Basic program not to make money, but for interest.
Unexpectedly, Bill Gates and Paul Allen got it, slightly altered, it was used in the PC, but also earned a large sum of money.
Bill Gates with this “slightly modified model” to earn money, although also tried to develop their own software, but all ended in failure.
In 1980, Bill Gates learned from his mother, Mary Gates, that IBM was going to develop an operating system for PCs, and his heart immediately became excited.
As mentioned above, Mary Gates was the president of the United Way International, where she met John Eccles, the CEO of IBM.
Subsequently, Bill Gates hitched this relationship and got the opportunity to work with IBM.
In order to quickly complete the task, Bill Gates came up with the “imitation + change” method, and also invited Harvard alumnus Steve Powellmer to join in the big business.
Bill Gates first bought an operating system called QDOS for $50,000, improved it slightly, renamed the product DOS, and then licensed it to IBM.
The ants stood on the shoulders of giants, and naturally became giants.
V. Using social influence and money to buy out new technology
In August 1981, IBM PC was introduced and instantly became a world sensation, reaching a revenue generation of $4 billion in just 3 years.
Bill Gates’ DOS system also sizzled up and was subsequently licensed to more than 50 hardware manufacturers, making a fortune.
Until 1985, Microsoft also made a profit of $2 billion in licensing fees on operating systems.
In the following years, Bill Gates took advantage of the strong market and money power to repeatedly perform the “star-sucking” method, annexing many small companies with new technologies and pocketing their products for subsequent development.
Windows, for example, is one of them.
Windows was originally the technology of Xerox and Apple, and Bill Gates developed subsequent extensions, resulting in Windows versions 1.01-1.04.
(PS: Apple took exception to Microsoft’s actions and sued Microsoft for copyright infringement, but eventually lost.)
However, there were always more or less problems with some of the earlier versions, and Microsoft was constantly improving various problems until it got Windows 95, when most of the problems were really solved.
In 1986, Microsoft went public on NASDAQ and its stock price doubled six times in one year; the following year, Bill Gates, at the age of 31, appeared on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.
Subsequently, no one could stop Microsoft, and it sped all the way to become the uncrowned king of the world’s software industry, wrapped in the wind of the times (TV series).
Sixth, Bill Gates’s marriage and best friends
Throughout the entrepreneurial process, Bill Gates’ proactive and aggressive personality has also made his future.
In love, his aggressive personality, continues to play a positive role.
Melinda was born in 1964 to a middle-class family, but her father said, “You must go to college, and I will pay for whatever college you go to.
Because of this goal, Melinda worked hard and was known as a “cute and charming girl” when she was in high school, surrounded by many suitors.
Eventually, Melinda went to Duke University and spent five years getting her MBA in computer science.
After graduation, her intended company was IBM, but the company disliked her as a novice and recommended her to Microsoft.
In 1987, at the age of 22, Melin reached the marketing manager of Microsoft, and was the only woman in the company.
A little bit of red in the middle of a million leaves always attracts more people’s attention.
Once, Melinda followed the company on a business trip and had the pleasure of meeting Bill Gates, and they had an interesting chat.
After the business trip, Melinda met Bill Gates in the underground parking lot several times in a row, each time chatting for a while and slowly getting familiar with it.
Unbeknownst to her, Melinda had a boyfriend at this time, and the two had a very close relationship, meeting weekly.
But Bill Gates did not care, and continued to play his predatory nature, and launched an aggressive pursuit of Melinda.
But Melinda’s mother thought “falling in love with a CEO is a bad thing” and did not approve of her daughter’s relationship with Bill Gates.
But Bill Gates is too good, how can a woman not be moved? Melinda was no exception.
In 1994, the two held a grand wedding.
It is reported that the wedding scene on that day, there are six billionaires, countless millionaires, became the most sensational topic at that time.
After the marriage, Melinda gave birth to three children for Bill Gates and gave him tremendous support.
In Bill Gates’ eyes, Melinda was a gentle sheep, putting up with blackmail after blackmail, his “special friendship” with his ex-lover Ann Wimblett, and his body that didn’t shower for days, making him the “best mate”.
Melinda, on the other hand, has become a full-time wife since the birth of her first child, and the only opportunity she has to stand in front of the stage is to do charity work.
In 2000, Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and set up the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” with Melinda to start philanthropic work.
To date, the foundation’s total giving has exceeded $50 billion, making it the largest private philanthropic foundation in the world.
Bill Gates’ philanthropic partners, in turn, include Warren Buffett, David Rockefeller, Dell, Armani, and many other prominent individuals and corporations.
The foundation’s main actor focuses on global public health and new energy, education, and anti-poverty, and has launched its work in more than 100 countries around the world.
The couple is also known as “America’s most generous philanthropists” because of their philanthropy.
As the richest man in the world for 13 years, with a huge business empire behind them, divorce is definitely a headache.
Will Bill Gates fall from the rich list if the couple divides all existing property? This is an interesting question.
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