Microsoft leaders warned Bill Gates over ‘inappropriate’ emails

Microsoft executives warned Bill Gates in 2008 about inappropriate emails he had sent to a female employee, a Microsoft spokesman said Monday.

The warning involved messages in which Gates, who at the time was a full-time employee and the company’s chair, asked an employee out on a date. Senior Microsoft executives learned of the emails in 2008, according to Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesperson.

“These emails proposed meeting outside of work and off campus,” Shaw said. “While flirtatious, they were not overtly sexual but were deemed to be inappropriate.”

After they discovered the messages, executives warned Gates that his behaviour was inappropriate and notified a small group of board members about the incident, Shaw said.