Please people, let's get in touch with reality.
I counted the fines, and not counting the non-disclosed sums, it comes up to about 9.8 billion.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annualSo you see the only year in the past three MS has cleared that much net profit was 2003 and if we add the undisclosed sums it will most certainly eclipse that amount.
Thanks for playing.
It's also funny that people think Bill Gates makes more money in one year than anyone. Please people, Bill's money is dependent on MSFT's stock price. You'll notice that he is now worth considerably less than the 75 odd billion he was worth a few years ago, largely due to a plummeting MSFT stock price.
The largest salasry ever paid to an exec is about $650 million including all bonuses and that wasn't paid to Bill Gates.