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Bill Gates Starts Up Another Company

10:10 - Friday 24 October 2008 by Jane McEntegart - source: Tom's Hardware

Recent reports have everyone talking about Bill Gates’ new company. While most are sitting around speculating as to what Bill is up to now, the Wall Street Journal seems to think the blogosphere is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

First reported by TechFlash, the general consensus is that Bill Gates is up to something. Barely out of retirement, it would seem Gates is eager to get back in the entrepreneurial saddle. With dribs and drabs of information from the four corners of the net there’s actually quite a bit to go on.

Bill’s new venture, bgc3 LLC, is a registered trademark and has its own address in the form of an office near Bill Gate’s home. It has its own website (you can check it out here), which although quiet (for now), adds fuel to the brightly burning fire. The company has a federal trademark as a think-tank and is classified as covering scientific and technological services, industrial analysis and research, and design and development of computer hardware and software. ReadWriteWeb reports (citing TechFlashes Todd Bishop) that the small office near Gates’ home is filled with high-tech Microsoft paraphernalia, including one of the touch-screen tables used as a guest book. So if there’s a guest book there must be guest, right ? Right.

The Wall Street Journal’s Business Technology Blog is currently trying to put rumors to rest regarding bgc3. The Journal reports that it paid a visit to Bill’s new office a little while back and says there’s nothing mysterious about it and that Bill’s new office is merely a place for him to work on all things Microsoft as well as focus on his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill can’t bring Microsoft stuff to the Foundation office, nor can he bring Foundation work to his Microsoft office. Having a neutral ground for Bill to work on whatever he wants, whenever he wants makes sense. But, as we all know, being Bill Gates you have a whole team of people who organize your day to day life. People who need to be paid. So, you set yourself up a legal entity to take care of that. All very plausible.

Of course, that begs the question why this new company has a website and a very pretty logo.