Bill Gates Bids Farewell to his Colleagues with a Lump in his Throat

Despite my best efforts to distract the world’s media from Bill Gates’ departure from Microsoft yesterday, the software genius-turned philanthropist held his own. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an audio file of the great man’s two-minute speech to his employees in Redmond. His voice cracks when he mentions Steve Ballmer, and all the “incredible people” at the company he founded, and you can hear the pride in his voice when he talks about how they changed the world. “You’ve made it so much fun for me, there won’t be a day in my life that I’m not thinking about Microsoft and the great things it’s doing. Thank you for making it the centre of my life and so much fun.” Oh, that’s set me off again. [Seattlepi via CNET]