Microsoft After Gates. (And Bill After Microsoft.)

One thing he won't do is get involved with the foundation's day-to-day operations. That's a job for the CEO. Coincidentally, Gates's transition occurs as Stonesifer is leaving that job; after several months of searching, Gates and his wife chose as a successor Jeff Raikes, a 27-year Microsoft executive who is close to the couple. "He will be very easy to get into a rhythm with, because we know each other so well," Gates says. Raikes admits, "If the Joe and Sally Smith Foundation had been the world's largest, I might not have immediately been thought of as a candidate." But as a product of Nebraska farm life, Raikes is interested in agriculture (a foundation focus), and his business skills will be important as the foundation roughly doubles its staff over the next few years and moves to a campuslike headquarters near Seattle's Space Needle.

Gates understands that his identity as a philanthropist will be drastically different than his role as the king of software. "We don't have a CES on malaria, so you don't get 50,000 people converging on a city and saying, 'Oh, Bill's keynote on malaria is coming'," he says. He realizes that working on the issues of the foundation could make him more of a lightning rod than he was as the head of the digital Borg. "The new world is more controversial than the old world," he says. "We do family planning. We fund research on crops, and some people think that you shouldn't take science to help the poor people. This whole thing about which operating system somebody uses is a pretty silly thing versus issues involving starvation or death."

As an example, Gates cites the choice he must soon make regarding the foundation's malaria funding. As he explains it, one alternative is to spend $300 million for trials of the current, imperfect vaccine. Or he could wait a few years until the vaccine is refined, possibly becoming more effective in preventing the disease. "You can't do both," he says. "One of those paths saves millions of lives, compared to the other path. I've never had a Microsoft decision that had exactly that character."

Treading on uncertain ground like that underlines the difficulties Gates may face in leaving the job he has loved so much. "It may be more of a change than he thinks," says Paul Allen, recalling his own departure from Microsoft in 1983. "You don't always realize how dramatic that transition is going to be when people aren't depending on your decisions day by day."

"In no sense would I say, 'Oh, I'm making a sacrifice because it's something my mother told me I ought to do'," Gates says. "I am doing something my mother told me I ought to do, but it's going to be a lot of fun. And I feel good about the impact as well." As for Microsoft, there's always e-mail.

© 2008