Bill Gates discusses Steve Jobs, Bing and India with Reddit users

Microsoft founder, Bill Gates today held an AMA ( ask me anything) session on popular social networking site, Reddit. The chairman of Microsoft and the co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation talked about vaccines, the foundation, the late Steve Jobs during the AMA on Reddit.

Here are some of his responses:

On his relationship with Steve jobs He and I respected each other. Our biggest joint project was the Mac where Microsoft had more people on the project than Apple did as we wrote a lot of applications. I saw Steve regularly over the years including spending an afternoon with him a few months before he tragically passed away.

On world-wide health cause that can be easily solved with a little more attention or resources Polio is the first thing to get done since we are close. Within 6 years we will have the last case. After that we will go after malaria and measles. Malaria kills over 500,000 kids every year mostly in Africa and did not get enough attention until the last decade. We also need vaccines to prevent HIV and TB which are making progress.

What is something that needs to be changed in the world, but money wont help? It would be nice if all governments were as rational as the Nordic governments — reaching compromise and providing services broadly. The Economist had a nice special section on this last week. Africa governments have often been weak but you can’t write a check to change that. Fortunately the average quality is going up. Mo Ibrahim tracks this in a great way.

The biggest challenges India currently faces that’s hindering its progress:India is making progress but there is still a lot to do particularly up in the North. They still need to add some of the vaccines that poorer countries are already using and saving lots of lives. India did a great job on polio and is increasing the health budget. We work closely with the federal and state governments to help out.

On Bing as a search engine: Seriously Bing is the better product at this point. Try the challenge. I am biased but the work to make Bing better has been amazing.

And of course someone asked Gates how much money do you have in your wallet? He said he had $100. When asked if Bill would give $1 million to the redditor, the Microsoft chairman said no.

Bill Gates also shared this picture of himself on Reddit which shows he still has a great sense of India