Gawker: valleywag, bill and melinda gates foundation

Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquito Swarm

Owen Thomas — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:01:07 EST

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd.

Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the report.)

A showman's way of making a point, perhaps. But it doesn't do much to undo Gates's reputation, borne out of the Microsoft antitrust investigations of the 1990s, that the man considers himself above the law. Doesn't California's Health and Safety Code have something to say about insect infestations?

(Photo by jurvetson)

Bill Gates's third act

Owen Thomas — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Oh, surely you didn't think Bill Gates would fade away into saintly obscurity after retiring from his day job at Microsoft, did you? Techflash reports he has a new company, a sort of think tank called BGC3. The letters stand, roughly, for "Bill Gates Catalyst". The three? Possibly a reference to the companies he's founded. Microsoft was Gates's first company; Corbis, the photo-licensing agency, his second. (Should we count the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, since it's a nonprofit.) BGC3 will house Gates's intellectual musings, with the resulting innovations to be funneled largely to Microsoft or to his foundation. It sounds a bit like former Microsoft research chief Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, minus the controversial accumulation of patents.

Jeff Raikes named new CEO of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Jackson West — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:40:00 EDT

Jeff Raikes, a Microsoft employee since 1981 and current head of the Office Business Division, will be replacing Patty Stonesifer as the CEO of the $37.3 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Raikes has been close to the First Couple at Microsoft for some time, and has some nonprofit experience through a trusteeship at the University of Nebraska. A sports fan who takes his daughter to University of Washington women's basketball games, Raikes is also part-owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball club. In the announcement, the foundation said it will be doubling the employment rolls. Look for more senior "softies" to move to the charitable organization as a pre-retirement change of pace. But the question remains why the foundation can't, or won't, hire more experience non-profit veterans to manage the fund.(Photo by Steve Jurvetson)

Google: We give away less than Gates because we're smarter

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:47:14 EST

Google.org, Google's for-profit charity, announced all kinds of new initiatives today. The short version: health, climate change, good government. The basic idea, as MarketWatch notes in a video report about the project, is to approach "giving" like a venture capitalist. Thing is, Google's only "investing" about 3 percent as much as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No matter, says Google's Larry Brilliant in this clip.

Far more important than the amount of money you put in is the way you nurture the work that you do. The way you conceive it. The way you think about it strategically. The people that you get to work with to, ah, to tackle a problem.

Aren't you supposed to feel better about a company when it gives away $2 billion?

Gates Foundation leaves Africa hungry for more

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:00:14 EST

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts to fight AIDS, malaria and measles in Africa is working. Millions of vaccinated children are now safe from malaria and measles. In many parts of the continent, AIDS deaths are no longer on the rise. But now Africa has other problems, thanks to the charity's focused generosity. A recent Los Angeles Times exposé. It's all Bill's fault:

Gates Foundation money creates demand for specially trained clinicians, creating a "brain drain" from basic care
The focus on AIDS, measles and malaria leaves basic needs such as nutrition and transportation unmet
Gates-funded vaccines instruct patients not to discuss ailments the vaccines cannot cure

You had it right with the burger-joint panhandler, Bill: Giving money away is a thankless affair.

(Photo by AP/Seth Wenig)