Technology, Bill Gates | featured news

Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates said he was not satisfied with the company's pace of innovation over the last few years, and that it had mishandled its early mobile strategy.

Steve Jobs' passing has left the world without a guru-like figure who can get the world talking about tech, albeit Apple tech. Tim Cook is stage-shy, Bill Gates is no longer the force he once was (he appears to be more interested in finding ways to save the world) and Mark Zuckerberg is too caught up in the Facebook IPO debacle. Step forward Will.i.am and Simon Cowell, who believe they can stir tech passions with an The X Factor-style show.

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates remains the nation's richest man by far, as the tech and philanthropy giant took the top spot on the Forbes 400 list for the 19th year running, with a net worth of $66 billion. Investor Warren Buffett, the head of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., again took second with $46 billion, while Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison remains third with $41 billion and brothers Charles and David Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries Inc., tied for fourth with $31 billion.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the creator of WordPerfect.

Things are on the up for U.S. billionaires with more than half of them adding to their net worth in a year which once again saw Bill Gates as the richest of them all, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.