Mailing the story:

Blake Ross is sprawled in a chair at a coffee shop near Stanford University, his long legs, clad in baggy Tommy Hilfiger jeans, stretched underneath the table. He looks like any other college student who happened to stroll off campus. Yet as much as Ross blends in with the Stanford scene, the 20-year-old has also become a standout in the technology industry. At 17, he helped create the Firefox Web browser, which has since grown into the biggest threat to Microsoft's Internet Explorer since the Redmond, Wash., company battled and defeated the Netscape browser for Internet supremacy. Now three years later, Ross has dropped out of college to build an Internet software company — just as Bill Gates, whom Ross is often compared to, did to start Microsoft Corp. His goal is modest, motivated by his mother and 81-year-old grandfather: to make software less clunky, more people-friendly. And it's clear he possesses at least the vision and technical skill to pull it off.