December 30th, 1999

[8:15 AM] Steve Jobs Overwhelms Bill Gates, Henry Ford In Survey Of The Greats by Staff Yesterday, we ran a story on a poll being conducted at CNNfn to determine the most influential person on business this century. At the time of our story, Steve Jobs was #3 behind Bill Gates at #2, and Henry Ford at #1. Shortly after our story hit, the votes started racking up for Steve Jobs. By midday, the ever-mercurial Mr. Jobs had pushed on ahead of his erstwhile competitors and commanded a heavy lead of 34% of the vote. Unfortunately, the survey was inaccessible for much of the morning, but a quick look at the current results show Mr. Jobs firmly entrenched in 1st place with some 41.96% of the vote. Henry Ford remains in the #2 spot with 18.2% and Mr., Gates is now bringing up 3rd with 13.33%. The poll can be found at the CNNfn web site. The current results can also be found. If you haven't voted yet, go and do so. Check out the full list of candidates first! The Mac Observer Spin: This is much better than it was yesterday. The list of names chosen by CNNfn's editors is very impressive with a few exceptions. All of these people contributed in one way or another to the business world. Henry Ford, in particular, revolutionized the way manufacturing took place. It is our opinion that Steve Jobs, and his original vision of the GUI (as influenced by the Xerox PARC), has done more to move us into the information age than anyone else. It is also our opinion that history will look back at the Information Revolution as a bigger event than any other before it. As we said yesterday, Mr. Jobs has been the muse that led Mr. Gates and his rag tag group of coders to their own domination of the computing world today. CNNfn