Because he will save 7.6 million children this decade. The challenges he takes on are straight out of a comic book.

Bill and Melinda Gates announced plans Friday to invest $10 billion in the fight against a number of illnesses including AIDS and said the record donation could save nearly nine million lives. 

"By significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countries to 90 percent coverage -- including new vaccines to prevent severe diarrhea and pneumonia -- the model suggests that we could prevent the deaths of some 7.6 million children under 5 from 2010-2019." 

 
I've always had a very soft spot for any kind of philanthropy and I hold a personal belief of helping others any way I can (I donated my entire video game collection after passing high school - it was probably the only thing I had of any value back then). As a result, I've grown up admiring Bill Gates & Warren Buffet and their incredible effort in this field. These are individuals with genuinely good hearts and a great vision to go along with it. How many men in history can claim to have saved over 7 million lives as a direct result of their actions ? I'm truly in awe.

Good on him. Never was a critic of Bill Gates, but anyone who contributes to a better future for these kids is okay in my book.

*cheers*

He does with his money what a lot of us would like to think we would do with that kind of money (but probably wouldn't). 
Good man.

$10B is a little unfathomable.  
 
Way to go Mr. Gates. 

The chairman of M$$$$$$$$, one of the most generous people ever.

Bill Gates is still a dude? I haven't heard anyone talk about him since Windows '99 came out.

Way to use your money for a good cause, congrats.

Oh no, my Microsoft portable gaming machine!  Out the window!

 
Yay!Save Magic Johnson!

That's nice of him.

Hey, you can't criticize a man who gives that kind of cash to good research, even if he never has to worry about money for the rest of his life.
Good on him.

Just hope it gets put to good use...Money isn't always the answer, most of the time causes more problems than it solves. Good on him though.

 Wow, that's a lot. I respect him as a human for doing that, I couldn't live with the guilt if I was sitting on billions and wasn't helping the world in some way.
 
P.S. Every time I hear Bill Gates speak I always think about how much he sounds like Kermit the Frog. Am I the only one?

Bill is a great guy. I really respect him.
 
A lot of him give him shit for stealing Steve Jobs. He was just doing business.

Yeah, just the other day when he was on the Daily Show I thought - thank god all that money went to a nice guy in his case. Do you see all these oil sheiks spend money on things like that? No, they build a bunch of ridiculous hotel buildings in the middle of the desert and such.

Well he always had my respect... But my respect for him just went even higher.

Oh god I didn't realize he had 10 billion bucks to part with like that.  God damn that is a lot of money.

all i asked for on christmas was to be bill gates' son ...

He's also part of a group called 'The wisemen group'. Thought up jointly by Richard Branson and several other very influencial people. The same group that owns 700 kilometres of land in Africa solely devoted to bringing back certain animals from the brink of extinction, as well as many other animals that get hunted on a regular basis. The same group that helped the people who were held hostage at Bhagdad airport, in the 1990's, by contacting a king in a nearby country to Iraq. (This King had Saddams ear at the time.)
 
Sorry, I'm not showing my knowledge of this off very well, it's been a while since I read Richard Branson's autobiography.
 
They're cool guys, and they've realized that due to the amount of respect, power, money and influence they have collected in this world that it should be used to do as much good as is humanly possible.
 
You all might remember a certain plane that can take civilians, that can afford it, into space. In his autobiography he happens to mention that the fee will gradually get cheap enough for the average person to afford it.
He also happened to mention that promised a significant amount of money to the person who'd manage to create the fuel for said plane.
 
The fuel is still in it's prototype stages at the moment (being used with the test flights of his "space plane"), but he mentioned that the one that has succeeded has created it in such a way that the plane that gets people into space uses in 12 months what a normal plane uses in a month.
 
Anyway, back on topic, Bill gates is example of what people should do if they have that much money. :-)

Bill Gates should start his own college, all the other rich moguls did it.

*Slow Clap*

That's really good of him. It's nice to see a billionaire give some of it to good causes. Most of them just sit on them all day long.

That is a crazy amount of money. Good for Bill.

I've always been very skeptical regarding philanthropy. I've always been quick to criticize the hypocrisy of the ones involved, or how futile their contribution to the cause is, or even how futile the cause at hand is. But this is admirable. Hats off to Bill indeed.

Bill Gates is a good guy. Yes, he's a rich bastard, but he takes advantage of that in good ways. Cheers to him.

Go Bill!