inception cascade investment
Redmond is a city in King County , Washington , United States , located east of Seattle , within the Seattle metropolitan area . The population is ___MASK18___ , 560 in ___MASK22___ , an increase from the 2010 census , up from 45 , 256 in ___MASK21___ census . Redmond is commonly recognized as the home of Microsoft and Nintendo of America . With an annual bike race on city streets and the state ' s only velodrome , Redmond is also known as the " Bicycle Capital of the Northwest ". Paul Gardner Allen ( born January 21 , ___MASK80___ ) is an American business magnate , investor and philanthropist . He is best known as the co - founder of Microsoft , alongside Bill Gates . As of August 2016 , he was estimated to be the 40th richest person in the world , with an estimated wealth of $ ___MASK88___ . 6 billion . Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications , servers , and services developed by Microsoft . It was first announced by Bill Gates on ___MASK84___ August 1988 , at COMDEX in Las Vegas . Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications , the first version of Office contained Microsoft Word , Microsoft Excel , and Microsoft PowerPoint . Over the years , Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common spell checker , OLE data integration and Visual Basic for Applications scripting language . Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line - of - business software under the Office Business Applications brand . On 10 July ___MASK66___ , Softpedia reported that Office is used by over a billion people worldwide . Internet Explorer ( formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer , commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE ) is a discontinued series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems , starting in ___MASK9___ . It was first released as part of the add - on package Plus ! for Windows 95 that year . Later versions were available as free downloads , or in service packs , and included in the original equipment manufacturer ( OEM ) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows . William Henry " Bill " Gates III ( born October 28 , ___MASK42___ ) is an American business magnate , entrepreneur , investor , author , and philanthropist . In 1975 , Gates and Paul Allen co - founded Microsoft , which became the world ' s largest PC software company . During his career at Microsoft , Gates held the positions of chairman , CEO and chief software architect , and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014 . Gates has authored and co - authored several books . Kirkland is a city in King County , Washington , United States . The population was 87 , 281 at the ___MASK11___ census estimate , which made it the 6th largest city in King County and the 12th largest city in the state . Microsoft Windows ( or simply Windows ) is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed , marketed , and sold by Microsoft . It consists of several families of operating systems , each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture . Active Windows families include Windows NT , Windows Embedded and Windows Phone ; these may encompass subfamilies , e . g . Windows Embedded Compact ( Windows CE ) or Windows Server . Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x ; Windows ___MASK46___ Mobile is an active product , unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile . A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population . It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population . The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses ; other common censuses include agriculture , business , and traffic censuses . The United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as " individual enumeration , universality within a defined territory , simultaneity and defined periodicity ", and recommends that population censuses be taken at least every ___MASK46___ years . United Nations recommendations also cover census topics to be collected , official definitions , classifications and other useful information to co - ordinate international practice . Microsoft Corporation ( commonly referred to as Microsoft or MS ) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond , Washington , that develops , manufactures , licenses , supports and sells computer software , consumer electronics and personal computers and services . Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems , Microsoft Office office suite , and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers . Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup . As of ___MASK22___ , it was the world ' s largest software maker by revenue , and one of the world ' s most valuable companies . Cascade Investment , LLC is an American holding and investment company headquartered in Kirkland , Washington , United States . It is controlled by Bill Gates , and managed by Michael Larson . More than half of Gates ' fortune is held in assets outside his holding of Microsoft shares . Cascade is the successor company to Dominion Income Management , the former investment vehicle for Gates ' holdings , which was managed by Andrew Evans .