"Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates announced Thursday that he will transition from day-to-day responsibilities at the company he co-founded to concentrate on the charitable work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will continue on as the company’s chairman after transferring his duties over a two-year period. “This was a hard decision for me,” said Gates, who founded the world’s largest software company with childhood friend Paul Allen. “I’m very lucky to have two passions that I feel are so important and so challenging. As I prepare for this change, I firmly believe the road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever.”"Interesting, and not all-together surprising. Bill Gates has been focusing more and more on his charitable work, and after reading the Time magazine article about him earlier this year, I can see he has a real passion for it. I think it's great that someone with so much money wants to focus all his time on helping others - we need more people like that in this world.