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