Steve Ballmer

When Steve Ballmer assumed the CEO position at Microsoft Corp., he filled the shoes of Bill Gates—the world's richest man and most famous software mogul. He took over at the start of 2000, in the thick of the government's antitrust lawsuit against the company. A longtime friend and number-two man to Bill Gates, Ballmer was tapped as CEO to smooth over Microsoft's transition to a post-litigation phase by streamlining the company's internal bureaucracy and freeing Gates to concentrate on a future vision for the company, a vision which Ballmer would be charged with implementing.

Ballmer and Gates first met when the two were classmates at Harvard University. While Gates famously dropped out to start Microsoft, Ballmer stayed on to graduate, before accepting a job at Procter & Gamble. After Gates lured him to Microsoft, where he started in the sales department in 1980, Ballmer spent many years managing the company's relationship with high-tech giant IBM and overseeing the development of the Windows operating system, which would become the company's premier product and cash cow. In 1998, Gates named Ballmer president of the company, and his appointment to CEO followed less than two years later.

One of Ballmer's responsibilities was overhauling Microsoft's image in the face of its contentious legal difficulties. During this challenging period, Ballmer was insistent about the company's innocence. Additionally, Ballmer announced the next phase in Microsoft's technological evolution, that of transforming Windows products into a fundamentally new kind of operating system that will be spread throughout the Internet and all machines connected to it.

Notorious for his bombastic and hard-headed management style, along with an easygoing and affable personal demeanor—features that distinguished him from Gates—Ballmer was widely viewed as the logical and perfect choice to succeed Gates amidst the company's late-1990s difficulties. Meanwhile, managing the ambitions and difficulties of Bill Gates has paid off handsomely; in 2000, Forbes listed Ballmer as the 12th-richest man in the world.