HEADLINERS: BILL GATES

A billionaire genius, he strove to turn the info superhighway into a virtual marketplace

BILL GATES A billionaire genius, he strove to turn the info superhighway into a virtual marketplace

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE HE HAS TOWERED OVER the world of computing like a boyish, tousle-haired colossus, controlling the software that runs our desktop computers and helping transform a hobbyist toy into the engine of a $100 billion industry.

But this was the year that Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, rose above the confines of computer land and became a global celebrity, an icon of the information age. He wrote a best-selling book, The Road Ahead (Viking; $29.95), and hawked it on...

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