Bill Gates has made a commitment to basically give away all of his money and quit MS to devote full time to doing it. It will be a hard act to follow.
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 10:03 AM, JC Dill <jcdill.li...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hank Nussbacher wrote: > >> >> Google makes about $1.5B profit per quarter. $20M of charity? I don't >> like MS any more than most, but Gates Foundation has received $20B from Bill >> and Warren over the past 3 years. My hat goes off to those guys! >> > > Yes, the Gates Foundation gives a lot of money to worthy causes, which is > truly admirable. > However, to put things into perspective let's take a look at the history of > these two companies. > > Microsoft was founded 34 years ago (in 1975) and IPOd 23 years ago (in > 1986). Bill Gates didn't start his foundation until 12 years after the IPO. > > Google was founded (incorporated) 11 years ago in 1998, IPOd 5 years ago in > 2005. Google Foundation was created as part of the IPO: "a commitment to > contribute significant resources, including 1% of Google's equity and > profits in some form, as well as employee time, to address some of the > world's most urgent problems. That commitment became a range of giving > initiatives including Google.org." > > How much did Microsoft give to charity in 1991, 5 years after their IPO? > Would you bet against a proposition that by 2028 the Google Foundation does > just as much (or more) than the Gates foundation is doing today? > jc > > > -- “Discovering...discovering...we will never cease discovering... and the end of all our discovering will be to return to the place where we began and to know it for the first time.” -T.S. Eliot