BY DAVID FOSTER
The Associated Press
Bill Gates
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SEATTLE -- Click here for the Bill Gates you recognize: Merciless corporate titan? Idealistic visionary? Computer geek with way too much money?
The world's richest man has stirred envy and admiration for years, and the government's antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. has only revved up the debate over what makes him tick.
Its lawsuit, coming to trial today in Washington, D.C., accuses Microsoft of illegally bullying rivals in an effort to stifle competition in the Internet browser market and maintain the dominance of Windows, the operating system that runs nine out of 10 personal computers. Mr. Gates himself favors his visionary image.
"When I was 19, I caught sight of the future and based my career on what I saw. I turned out to have been right," he wrote in his 1995 hit, The Road Ahead.
A darker view is found in The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates.
Writes Wendy Goldman Rohm: "He was a predator, said the CEOs of scores of competing software companies: an ill-kempt, socially inept, scrawny, insecure, ruthless Lex Luthor."
Ms. Rohm's portrait of Mr. Gates -- as an unethical schemer who stops at nothing to dominate the industry -- appears to be shared by attorneys for the Justice Department.
Both friends and foes say the high-stakes antitrust case has done little to change Mr. Gates' take-no-prisoners approach to his business.
Whether motivated by lust for power and profit, as critics claim, or by his self-declared vision of bringing the world into the Information Age, Mr. Gates is known for impatience with limits.
"Bill is a very rational person. He's very logical, and he happens to be very competitive," said Scott Oki, a former Microsoft executive who has seen Mr. Gates direct his zeal for winning toward business ventures, water-skiing and even board games.
Whatever the contest, "Bill enjoys doing it in part because it's a competitive thing," Mr. Oki said. "He can apply his brain power to (winning)."
Those qualities helped make the young Gates a teen-age computer whiz at Seattle's exclusive Lakeside School.
At age 21, he dropped out of Harvard to run Microsoft, the software company he'd founded two years earlier with friend Paul Allen. At 31, he was a billionaire, and today, at 42, he is the world's wealthiest man, with a fortune pegged by Forbes magazine at more than $50 billion.
With his wife, Melinda, and 2-year-old daughter, Jennifer, Mr. Gates lives in a $53 million techno-dream house on the shore of Lake Washington.
Once stereotyped as the awkward computer nerd, Mr. Gates has grown smoother and more complex with age. He has discovered philanthropy, contributing more than $800 million of his fortune to charity. And he has found it prudent to court the politicians he once ignored. Microsoft has given almost $400,000 to the national Democratic and Republican parties since January 1997, more money than it gave in the previous six years combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Outside of the lawsuit, Mr. Gates is more congenial, keeping up a steady schedule of public appearances in which he plays booster for the brave new world of technology.
"I think he's the epitome of what's driving our generation," business major Andrea Masters told the Indianapolis Star after a Gates address at Indiana University.
"We're the generation of technology. Who better to learn from than the person who has created such a whirlwind of opportunities for us?"
