You can just as easily say it was the other way around: Bill Gates' was programming and using computers (even quasi-professionally) from the time he was a young

You can just as easily say it was the other way around: Bill Gates' was programming and using computers (even quasi-professionally) from the time he was a young child in 1960s. His stated vision was always a 'computer on every desk' going back to a time when people only read about computers in magazines, and he happily and dedicatedly helped accomplish that. So effectively, the US Government convicted him of being a monopolist. I can't read Zuck's mind or heart and he's clearly passionate about Facebook, but 'connecting everyone in the world' has always struck me as a kind of post-hoc mission statement made once they were already dominant (& the world already well connected) and more vitally, wanted to start making FB a lot less private by default to keep boosting & posting site engagement metrics. When they started FB, wasn't it basically an unauthorized interactive hack/mashup of the student directory of sorts? It all kinds of fits a pattern, doesn't it? It seems very opportunistic and a lot less like a grand vision, to me. That isn't to diminish the technical, business, and cultural accomplishment that is Facebook or Mark's contributions to it or leadership. I think it is great that he's taking this leave too. His child is his next startup and that's a great thing and a great example.