computer software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
,
consumer electronics
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic ( analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usuall ...
,
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s, and related services headquartered at the
Microsoft Redmond campus
The Microsoft campus is the corporate headquarters of Microsoft, located in Redmond, Washington, United States, a part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, shortly before ...
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
. Its best-known software products are the
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
line of
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
s, the
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
and
Edge
Edge or EDGE may refer to:
Technology Computing
* Edge computing, a network load-balancing system
* Edge device, an entry point to a computer network
* Adobe Edge, a graphical development application
* Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed ...
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...
s. Its flagship hardware products are the
Xbox
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...
s and the
Microsoft Surface
Microsoft Surface is a series of touchscreen-based personal computers, tablets and interactive whiteboards designed and developed by Microsoft, running the Microsoft Windows operating system, apart from the Surface Duo, which runs on Andro ...
lineup of
touchscreen
A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...
personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2019. It is one of the Big Five American
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...
companies, alongside
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
and
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which ...
on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell
BASIC interpreter
A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BAS ...
s for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
(IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of
LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by their acquisition of
Skype Technologies
Skype Technologies S.A.R.L (also known as Skype Software S.A.R.L, Skype Communications S.A.R.L, Skype Inc., and Skype Limited) is a Luxembourgish telecommunications company headquartered in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, whose chief business is th ...
for $8.5 billion in May 2011.
, Microsoft is market-dominant in the
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such ...
operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android. The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops, laptops, tabs, gadgets, and servers, including
Internet search
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
(with
Bing
Bing most often refers to:
* Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer
* Microsoft Bing, a web search engine
Bing may also refer to:
Food and drink
* Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread
* Bing (soft drink), a UK brand
* Bing cherry, a varie ...
mixed reality
Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time. Mixed reality is largely synony ...
(
HoloLens
Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...
), cloud computing ( Azure), and software development (
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...
).
Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000, and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy. This unfolded with Microsoft acquiring Danger Inc. in 2008, entering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of
tablet computer
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...
s, and later forming
Microsoft Mobile
Microsoft Mobile was a subsidiary of Microsoft involved in the development and manufacturing of mobile phones. Based in Espoo, Finland, it was established in 2014 following the acquisition of Nokia's Devices and Services division by Microsoft i ...
through the acquisition of
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
's devices and services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and has instead focused on
cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
, a move that helped the company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999.
Earlier dethroned by Apple in 2010, in 2018 Microsoft reclaimed its position as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. In April 2019, Microsoft reached the
market cap
Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders.
Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by t ...
brand valuation Brand valuation is the process of estimating the total financial value of a brand. A conflict of interest exists if those who value a brand were also involved in its creation. The ISO 10668 standard specifies six key requirements for the process of ...
.
Microsoft has been criticized for its monopolistic practices and the company's software has been criticized for problems with ease of use,
robustness
Robustness is the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. When it is transposed into a system, it refers to the ability of tolerating perturbations that might affect the system’s functional body. In the same line ''robustness'' ca ...
, and
security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...
.
History
1972–1985: Founding
Childhood friends
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
and
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which ...
sought to make a business using their skills in
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...
. In 1972, they founded
Traf-O-Data
Traf-O-Data was a business partnership between Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert that existed in the 1970s. The objective was to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers. The company had only ...
, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Gates enrolled at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
while Allen pursued a degree in computer science at
Washington State University
Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant uni ...
, though he later dropped out to work at
Honeywell
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...
. The January 1975 issue of ''
Popular Electronics
''Popular Electronics'' was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soo ...
'' featured
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) was an American electronics company founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico that began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971 and personal computers in 1975.
Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims foun ...
's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration. Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as
Altair BASIC
Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASI ...
. Gates and Allen established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested the name "Micro-Soft", short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft. Microsoft moved its headquarters to
Bellevue, Washington
Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as ...
, in January 1979.
Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
called
Xenix
Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and ...
, but it was
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
that solidified the company's dominance. IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS to be used in the
IBM Personal Computer
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
(IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to
IBM PC DOS
IBM PC DOS, an acronym for IBM Personal Computer Disk Operating System, is a discontinued disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. It was manufactured and sold by IBM from the early 1980s into the 2000s. Developed by Microsoft, it was also ...
. Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, so other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such ...
s, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named
Microsoft Press
Microsoft Press is the publishing arm of Microsoft, usually releasing books dealing with various current Microsoft technologies. Microsoft Press' first introduced books were ''The Apple Macintosh Book'' by Cary Lu and ''Exploring the IBM PCjr H ...
.
Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing
Hodgkin's lymphoma
Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a type of lymphoma, in which cancer originates from a specific type of white blood cell called lymphocytes, where multinucleated Reed–Sternberg cells (RS cells) are present in the patient's lymph nodes. The condition w ...
. Allen claimed in ''Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft'' that Gates wanted to dilute his share in the company when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease because he did not think that he was working hard enough. Allen later invested in low-tech sectors, sports teams, commercial real estate, neuroscience, private space flight, and more.
1985–1994: Windows and Office
Microsoft released
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
on November 20, 1985, as a graphical extension for MS-DOS, despite having begun jointly developing
OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...
with IBM the previous August. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government. Meanwhile, the company was at work on Microsoft
Windows NT
Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system.
The first version of Win ...
, which was heavily based on their copy of the OS/2 code. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular
kernel
Kernel may refer to:
Computing
* Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems
* Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution
* Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming
* Kernel method, in machine learn ...
Win32
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...
application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from
16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors.
A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two mo ...
(MS-DOS-based) Windows. Microsoft informed IBM of Windows NT, and the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.
In 1990, Microsoft introduced the
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...
suite which bundled separate applications such as
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...
and
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for App ...
. On May 22, Microsoft launched
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predeces ...
, featuring streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the
Intel 386
The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors
computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
ing and the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft a market dominance. The company released
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...
on August 24, 1995, featuring
pre-emptive multitasking
In computing, preemption is the act of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This interrupt is done by an external scheduler with no assistance or cooperation from the task. This preemp ...
, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API. Windows 95 came bundled with the
online service
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, ...
MSN, which was at first intended to be a competitor to the Internet, and (for OEMs)
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
, a
Web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...
. Internet Explorer has not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes, because the boxes were printed before the team finished the Web browser, and instead were included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' called "the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry's history," Windows 95 quickly became a success. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
's
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
unit created a new
24/7
In commerce and industry, 24/7 or 24-7 service (usually pronounced "twenty-four seven") is service that is available at any time and usually, every day. An alternate orthography for the numerical part includes 24×7 (usually pronounced "twenty ...
cable news channel,
MSNBC
MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politi ...
. Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as
personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...
s. In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court, stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
with Windows.
On January 13, 2000, Bill Gates handed over the CEO position to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, while creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect. Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to (among other things) increase security and protect
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decried the alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, and as a form of digital rights management: for example, the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner but also secured against its owner as well. On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of '' United States v. Microsoft Corp.'', calling the company an "abusive monopoly." Microsoft later settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004. On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. The company released the
Xbox
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...
later that year, entering the
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...
market dominated by
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
brought antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million ($613 million) and requiring Microsoft to produce new versions of Windows XP without
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...
: Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. In November 2005, the company's second video game console, the
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...
, was released. There were two versions, a basic version for $299.99 and a deluxe version for $399.99.
Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the
Zune
Zune is a discontinued line of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until its discontinuation in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, digital media player software for Windows Per ...
series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform
Portable Media Center
Portable Media Center (PMC) is a portable media player (PMP) platform developed by Microsoft. Announced at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and released in early 2004, it was originally positioned as a competitor to Apple's iPod. All it ...
. These expanded on previous hardware commitments from Microsoft following its original Microsoft Mouse in 1983; as of 2007 the company sold the best-selling wired keyboard ( Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000), mouse (
IntelliMouse
IntelliMouse is a series of computer mice from Microsoft. The IntelliMouse series is credited with a number of innovations; Microsoft was among the first mouse vendors to introduce a scroll wheel, an optical mouse, and dedicated auxiliary buttons ...
), and desktop webcam ( LifeCam) in the United States. That year the company also launched the Surface "digital table", later renamed PixelSense.
2007–2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Stores
Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows,
Vista
Vista usually refers to a distant view.
Vista may also refer to:
Software
*Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007
* VistA, (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) ...
, focused on features, security and a redesigned user interface dubbed
Aero
Aero is a Greek prefix relating to flight and air. In British English, it is used as an adjective related to flight (e.g., as a shortened substitute for aeroplane).
Aero, Ærø, or Aeros may refer to:
Aeronautics Airlines and companies
* Aero ...
.
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novem ...
, released at the same time, featured a " Ribbon" user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both products helped to produce a record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved". 2007 also saw the creation of a multi-core unit at Microsoft, following the steps of server companies such as Sun and IBM.
Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects.
Azure Services Platform
Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...
, the company's entry into the
cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open a chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail
Microsoft Store
Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...
opened in
Scottsdale, Arizona
, settlement_type = City
, named_for = Winfield Scott
, image_skyline =
, image_seal = Seal of Scottsdale (Arizona).svg
, image_blank_emblem = City of Scottsdale Script Logo.svg
, nick ...
; the same day
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease-of-use features and performance enhancements, rather than an extensive reworking of Windows.
As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft had struggled to keep up with its rivals in providing a modern smartphone operating system, falling behind
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
and
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
-sponsored Android in the United States. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped their aging flagship mobile operating system,
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
, replacing it with the new
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...
OS that was released in October that year. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography, and iconography, utilizing the concept of minimalism. Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones using the Windows Phone OS. It launched an alliance with
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
in 2011 and Microsoft worked closely with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained partners with long-time Windows Mobile OEM
HTC
HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, s=宏达国际电子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t) or High Tech Computer Corporation, (literally ''Hongda International Electron ...
. Microsoft is a founding member of the
Open Networking Foundation
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a non-profit operator-led consortium. It uses an open source business model aimed at promoting networking through software-defined networking (SDN) and standardizing the OpenFlow protocol and related tech ...
started on March 23, 2011. Fellow founders were
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
,
Verizon Communications
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
, Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a
cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas.
2011–2014: Windows 8/8.1, Xbox One, Outlook.com, and Surface devices
Following the release of
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...
, Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation's logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the
Metro design language
Microsoft Design Language (or MDL), previously known as Metro, is a design language created by Microsoft. This design language is focused on typography and simplified icons, absence of clutter, increased content to chrome ratio ("content bef ...
. Microsoft unveiled
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...
, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and
tablet computer
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...
s, in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview was released on September 13, which was subsequently replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and released to the public in May. The
Surface
A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is ...
was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company's history to have its hardware made by Microsoft.Eichenwald, Kurt "Microsoft's Lost Decade: How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo" , '' Vanity Fair'', August 2012 On June 25, Microsoft paid US$1.2 billion to buy the social network
Yammer
Yammer () is an enterprise social networking service that is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. It is used mainly for private communication within organizations but is also used for networks spanning various organizations. Access to ...
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...
. On September 4, 2012, Microsoft released
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the sixth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows 8 and succe ...
.
In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC, which it had run as a joint venture with NBC since 1996. On October 1, Microsoft announced its intention to launch a news operation, part of a new-look MSN, with Windows 8 later in the month. On October 26, 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and the
Microsoft Surface
Microsoft Surface is a series of touchscreen-based personal computers, tablets and interactive whiteboards designed and developed by Microsoft, running the Microsoft Windows operating system, apart from the Surface Duo, which runs on Andro ...
. Three days later,
Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was s ...
was launched. To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of "holiday stores" across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012. On March 29, 2013, Microsoft launched a Patent Tracker.
In August 2012, the
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the
Domain Awareness System The Domain Awareness System is the largest digital surveillance system in the world as part of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative in partnership between the New York Police Department and Microsoft to monitor New York City. It allows the NYPD t ...
which is used for
Police surveillance in New York City
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) actively monitors public activity in New York City, New York, United States. Historically, surveillance has been used by the NYPD for a range of purposes, including against crime, counter-terrorism, and a ...
.
The Kinect, a motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a
video game controller
A game controller, gaming controller, or simply controller, is an input device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game, typically to control an object or character in the game. Before the seventh generatio ...
, first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the
Xbox One
The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...
video game console. Kinect's capabilities were revealed in May 2013: an ultra-wide 1080p camera, function in the dark due to an infrared sensor, higher-end processing power and new software, the ability to distinguish between fine movements (such as a thumb movement), and determining a user's heart rate by looking at their face. Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 that suggests that the corporation may use the Kinect camera system to monitor the behavior of television viewers as part of a plan to make the viewing experience more interactive. On July 19, 2013, Microsoft stocks suffered their biggest one-day percentage sell-off since the year 2000, after its fourth-quarter report raised concerns among investors on the poor showings of both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet. Microsoft suffered a loss of more than US$32 billion.
In line with the maturing PC business, in July 2013, Microsoft announced that it would reorganize the business into four new business divisions, namely Operating systems, Apps, Cloud, and Devices. All previous divisions will be dissolved into new divisions without any workforce cuts. On September 3, 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
's mobile unit for $7 billion, following
Amy Hood
Amy Hood (born August 9, 1971) is an American business executive serving as Chief financial officer, Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft since 2013. Hood is the first female CFO in Microsoft's history.
Hood joined Microsoft in 2002, holding pos ...
taking the role of CFO.
2014–2020: Windows 10, Microsoft Edge, and HoloLens
On February 4, 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella, who previously led Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division. On the same day, John W. Thompson took on the role of chairman, in place of Bill Gates, who continued to participate as a technology advisor. Thompson became the second chairman in Microsoft's history. On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $7.2 billion. This new subsidiary was renamed Microsoft Mobile Oy. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company
Mojang
Mojang Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. The studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game '' Minecraft'', the best-selling video game of all time.
Mojang Studios was founded by the independ ...
, best known for ''
Minecraft
''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java (programming language), Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made pub ...
'', for $2.5 billion. On June 8, 2017, Microsoft acquired Hexadite, an Israeli security firm, for $100 million.
On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of their first
Interactive whiteboard
An interactive whiteboard (IWB), also known as interactive board or smart board, is a large interactive display board in the form factor of a whiteboard. It can either be a standalone touchscreen computer used independently to perform task ...
,
Microsoft Surface Hub
The Surface Hub is a brand of interactive whiteboard developed and marketed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Surface family. The Surface Hub is a wall-mounted or roller-stand-mounted device with either a 55-inch (140  ...
. On July 29, 2015,
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
was released, with its server sibling,
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2016 is the eighth release of the Windows Server Server (computing), server operating system developed by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was developed concurrently with Windows 10 and is the su ...
, released in September 2016. In Q1 2015, Microsoft was the third largest maker of mobile phones, selling 33 million units (7.2% of all). While a large majority (at least 75%) of them do not run any version of
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...
— those other phones are not categorized as
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s by Gartner in the same time frame 8 million Windows smartphones (2.5% of all smartphones) were made by all manufacturers (but mostly by Microsoft). Microsoft's share of the U.S. smartphone market in January 2016 was 2.7%. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees.
On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced the merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft's gaming in the future. On January 24, 2017, Microsoft showcased Intune for Education at the BETT 2017 education technology conference in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. In May 2016, the company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million. In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named Microsoft Azure Information Protection. It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices. In November 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member during Microsoft's Connect(); developer event in New York. The cost of each Platinum membership is US$500,000 per year. Some analysts deemed this unthinkable ten years prior, however, as in 2001 then-CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux "cancer". Microsoft planned to launch a preview of Intune for Education "in the coming weeks", with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $30 per device, or through volume licensing agreements.
In January 2018, Microsoft patched
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
and
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
operating systems. In February 2018, Microsoft killed notification support for their
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...
devices which effectively ended firmware updates for the discontinued devices. In March 2018, Microsoft recalled Windows 10 S to change it to a mode for the Windows operating system rather than a separate and unique operating system. In March the company also established guidelines that censor users of
Office 365
Microsoft 365 is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs formerly marketed under the name ...
from using
profanity
Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...
in private documents. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows
File Manager
A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...
under the
MIT License
The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...
to celebrate the program's 20th anniversary. In April the company further expressed willingness to embrace open source initiatives by announcing Azure Sphere as its own derivative of the
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
operating system. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop
cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
products. The project is dubbed "Azure Government" and has ties to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) surveillance program. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...
for $7.5 billion, a deal that closed on October 26, 2018. On July 10, 2018, Microsoft revealed the Surface Go platform to the public. Later in the month, it converted
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a proprietary business communication platform developed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. Teams primarily competes with the similar service Slack, offering workspace chat and videoconferencin ...
to
gratis
Gratis may refer to:
* Free, meaning without charge. See Gratis versus libre
* Gratis, Ohio, a village in Preble County, US
* Gratis Township, Preble County, Ohio, US
See also
* Free (disambiguation)
{{disambiguation ...
. In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy. It also unveiled Snapdragon 850 compatibility for
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
fish farming
upright=1.3, Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture) at Loch Ainort, Isle of Skye">mariculture.html" ;"title="Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture">Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture) at Loch Ainort, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Fish farming or ...
tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for Internet of things (IoT) technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from
Kindai University
is a private non-sectarian and coeducational university based in Higashiosaka, Osaka, Japan with campuses in five other locations: Nara, Nara; Ōsakasayama, Osaka; Uchita, Wakayama; Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima; and Iizuka, Fukuoka.
The Eng ...
, the water pump mechanisms use
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific
computer program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components.
A computer program ...
s used in the process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms. In September 2018, Microsoft discontinued Skype Classic. On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the
Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company that acquires patents and licenses them royalty-free to its community members who, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux and Linux-related systems and applications.
History
The co ...
community despite holding more than 60,000 patents. In November 2018, Microsoft agreed to supply 100,000
Microsoft HoloLens
Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...
headsets to the
United States military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is th ...
in order to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy." In November 2018, Microsoft introduced Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for Microsoft Azure. In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a set of specifications written by the UEFI Forum. They define the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of ...
(UEFI) core used in
Microsoft Surface
Microsoft Surface is a series of touchscreen-based personal computers, tablets and interactive whiteboards designed and developed by Microsoft, running the Microsoft Windows operating system, apart from the Surface Duo, which runs on Andro ...
and
Hyper-V
Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded W ...
products. The project promotes the idea of
Firmware as a Service
TianoCore EDK II (formerly Tiano) is the reference implementation of UEFI by Intel. EDK is the abbreviation for EFI Development Kit and is developed by the TianoCore community. TianoCore EDK II is the de facto standard generic UEFI services implem ...
. In the same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of
Windows Forms
Windows Forms (WinForms) is a free and open-source graphical (GUI) class library included as a part of Microsoft .NET, .NET Framework or Mono Framework, providing a platform to write client applications for desktop, laptop, and tablet PCs. Whil ...
and the
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source graphical subsystem (similar to WinForms) originally developed by Microsoft for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initia ...
(WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. December also saw the company discontinue the
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...
project in favor of Chromium backends for their browsers.
On February 20, 2019, Microsoft Corp said it will offer its cyber security service AccountGuard to 12 new markets in Europe including Germany, France and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers in political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company's
war profiteering
A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering, making a profit criticized a ...
from a $480 million contract to develop
virtual reality headset
A virtual reality headset (or VR headset) is a head-mounted device that provides virtual reality for the wearer. VR headsets are widely used with VR video games but they are also used in other applications, including simulators and trainers. VR ...
s for the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
.
2020–present: Acquisitions, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 11
On March 26, 2020, Microsoft announced it was acquiring Affirmed Networks for about $1.35 billion. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, Microsoft closed all of its retail stores indefinitely due to health concerns. On July 22, 2020, Microsoft announced plans to close its Mixer service, planning to move existing partners to
Facebook Gaming
Facebook is a social-network service website launched on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. The following is a list of software and technology features that can be found on the Facebook website and mobile app and are available to users of t ...
.
On July 31, 2020, it was reported that Microsoft was in talks to acquire
TikTok
TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes.
TikTok is an international version o ...
after the
Trump administration
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory ...
ordered
ByteDance
ByteDance Ltd. () is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing social network ...
to
divest
In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset for financial, ethical, or political objectives or sale of an existing business by a firm. A divestment is the opposite of an investment. Divestiture is a ...
ownership of the application to the U.S. On August 3, 2020, after speculation on the deal,
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
stated that Microsoft could buy the application, however, it should be completed by September 15, 2020, and that the
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and ...
should receive a portion if it were to go through.
On August 5, 2020, Microsoft stopped its
xCloud
Xbox Cloud Gaming (formerly known as Project xCloud and colloquially known as xCloud) is Microsoft's Xbox cloud gaming service. Initially released in beta testing in November 2019, the service later launched for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass ...
game streaming test for iOS devices. According to Microsoft, the future of xCloud on iOS remains unclear and potentially out of Microsoft's hands.
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
has imposed a strict limit on "remote desktop clients" which means applications are only allowed to connect to a user-owned host device or gaming console owned by the user. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire video game company
ZeniMax Media
ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland, and founded in 1999.
The company owns publisher Bethesda Softworks with its development unit Bethesda Game Studios (developer of ''The Elder Scrolls,'' ...
, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, for about $7.5 billion, with the deal expected to occur in the second half of 2021 fiscal year. On March 9, 2021, the acquisition was finalized and ZeniMax Media became part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios division. The total price of the deal was $8.1 billion.
On September 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that it had an exclusive license to use
OpenAI
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promo ...
’s GPT-3 artificial intelligence language generator. The previous version of
GPT-3
Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Given an initial text as prompt, it will produce text that continues the prompt.
The architecture is a standa ...
, called
GPT-2
Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2) is an open-source artificial intelligence created by OpenAI in February 2019. GPT-2 translates text, answers questions, summarizes passages, and generates text output on a level that, while somet ...
, made headlines for being “too dangerous to release” and had numerous capabilities, including designing websites, prescribing medication, answering questions, and penning articles. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles.
In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy
Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software.
Nuance merged with its compe ...
for approximately $16 billion. The acquisition of Nuance was completed in March 2022. In 2021, in part due to the strong quarterly earnings spurred by the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, Microsoft's valuation came to near $2 trillion. The increased necessity for remote work and
distance education
Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...
drove demand for
cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
and grew the company's gaming sales.
On June 24, 2021, Microsoft announced
Windows 11
Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...
during a Livestream. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be the last version of the operating system; set to be released in the third quarter of 2021. It was released to the general public on October 5, 2021.
In early September 2021, it was announced that the company had acquired Takelessons, an online platform which connects students and tutors in numerous subjects. The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing an online education to large numbers of people.
In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software. Users can ensure that their calls are encrypted and can utilize a security code that both parties on a call must verify on their respective ends. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies' progress against
OKR
Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs) is a goal-setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes. The development of OKR is generally attributed to Andrew Grove wh ...
s. Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally.io into its Viva family of employee experience products.
On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and
holding company
A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. (the publicly traded parent company of Activision Publishing) and Viven ...
in an all-cash deal worth $68.7 billion. Activision Blizzard is best known for producing franchises, including but not limited to ''
Warcraft
''Warcraft'' is a franchise of video games, novels, and other media created by Blizzard Entertainment. The series is made up of five core games: '' Warcraft: Orcs & Humans'', '' Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness'', '' Warcraft III: Reign of Chao ...
Crash Bandicoot
''Crash Bandicoot'' is a video game franchise originally developed by Naughty Dog as an exclusive for Sony's PlayStation console. It has seen numerous installments created by various developers and published on multiple platforms. The series c ...
'', ''
Spyro the Dragon
''Spyro the Dragon'' is a platform game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation on September 9, 1998. The first game in the '' Spyro'' series, it stars the title character, a young purple ...
'', ''
Skylanders
''Skylanders'' is a toys-to-life action-adventure video game series published by Activision. ''Skylanders'' games are played by placing character figures called the Skylanders on the "Portal of Power", a device that reads the figures' tags throu ...
'', and ''
Overwatch
''Overwatch'' is a multimedia franchise centered on a series of online multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment: '' Overwatch'' released in 2016, and ''Overwatch 2'' released in 2022. Both games f ...
''. Activision and Microsoft each released statements saying the acquisition was to benefit their businesses in the
metaverse
In science fiction, the "metaverse" is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial usa ...
, many saw Microsoft's acquisition of video game studios as an attempt to compete against Meta Platforms, with
TheStreet
''TheStreet'' is a financial news and financial literacy website. It is a subsidiary of The Arena Group. The company provides both free content and subscription services such as Action Alerts Plus a stock recommendation portfolio co-managed by ...
referring to Microsoft wanting to become "the
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
of the metaverse". Microsoft has not released statements regarding Activision's recent legal controversies regarding employee abuse, but reports have alleged that Activision CEO
Bobby Kotick
Robert A. Kotick (born 1963) is an American businessman who serves as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Activision Blizzard. He became CEO of Activision in 1991 after purchasing a company stake the previous year. Kotick engineered a merger ...
, a major target of the controversy, will leave the company after the acquisition is finalized. The deal is expected to close in 2023 followed by a review from the US Federal Trade Commission.
Corporate affairs
Board of directors
The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. Members of the board of directors as of July 2020 are Satya Nadella,
Reid Hoffman
Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...
Penny Pritzker
Penny Sue Pritzker (born May 2, 1959) is an American billionaire businesswoman and civic leader who served as the 38th United States secretary of commerce in the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. She was confirmed by a Senate vote of 97 ...
,
Charles Scharf
Charles "Charlie" W. Scharf (born April 24, 1965) is an American investment banker and business executive who serves as the chief executive officer and president of Wells Fargo. He was previously the CEO of Visa Inc. and BNY Mellon, and has been ...
Emma Walmsley
Dame Emma Natasha Walmsley (born June 1969) is the chief executive officer (CEO) of GlaxoSmithKline. She succeeded Sir Andrew Witty, who retired in March 2017. Before GSK, she worked for L'Oréal for 17 years, and was a non-executive director ...
and
Padmasree Warrior
Padmasree Warrior (born Yellepeddi Padmasree) is an Indian-American businesswoman and technology executive. She is known for her leadership roles in technology firms like Cisco where she served as the CTO for seven years, and at Motorola where ...
. Board members are elected every year at the annual shareholders' meeting using a majority vote system. There are four committees within the board that oversee more specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues with the company including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including the nomination of the board; and the Regulatory and Public Policy Committee, which includes legal/antitrust matters, along with privacy, trade, digital safety, artificial intelligence, and environmental sustainability.
On March 13, 2020, Gates announced that he is leaving the board of directors of Microsoft and
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiu ...
to focus more on his philanthropic efforts. According to Aaron Tilley of ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' this is "marking the biggest boardroom departure in the tech industry since the death of longtime rival and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs."
On January 13, 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft's board of directors plans to hire an external law firm to review its sexual harassment and
gender discrimination
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primaril ...
policies, and to release a summary of how the company handled past allegations of misconduct against Bill Gates and other corporate executives.
Chief executives
#
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
(IPO) in 1986, the opening stock price was $21; after the
trading day
In business, the trading day or regular trading hours (RTH) is the time span that a stock exchange is open, as opposed to electronic or extended trading hours (ETH). For example, the New York Stock Exchange is, as of 2020, open from 9:30 AM Easte ...
, the price closed at $27.75. As of July 2010, with the company's nine
stock split
A stock split or stock divide increases the number of shares in a company. For example, after a 2-for-1 split, each investor will own double the number of shares, and each share will be worth half as much.
A stock split causes a decrease of mark ...
s, any IPO shares would be multiplied by 288; if one were to buy the IPO today, given the splits and other factors, it would cost about 9 cents. The stock price peaked in 1999 at around $119 ($60.928, adjusting for splits). The company began to offer a
dividend
A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it is able to pay a portion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Any amount not distributed is taken to be re-i ...
on January 16, 2003, starting at eight cents per share for the fiscal year followed by a dividend of sixteen cents per share the subsequent year, switching from yearly to quarterly dividends in 2005 with eight cents a share per quarter and a special one-time payout of three dollars per share for the second quarter of the fiscal year. Though the company had subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft's stock remained steady for years.Standard & Poor's and
Moody's Investors Service
Moody's Investors Service, often referred to as Moody's, is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service provides internationa ...
have both given a AAA rating to Microsoft, whose assets were valued at $41 billion as compared to only $8.5 billion in unsecured debt. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to
government bond
A government bond or sovereign bond is a form of bond issued by a government to support public spending. It generally includes a commitment to pay periodic interest, called coupon payments'','' and to repay the face value on the maturity dat ...
s. For the first time in 20 years
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
surpassed Microsoft in Q1 2011 quarterly profits and revenues due to a slowdown in PC sales and continuing huge losses in Microsoft's Online Services Division (which contains its search engine
Bing
Bing most often refers to:
* Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer
* Microsoft Bing, a web search engine
Bing may also refer to:
Food and drink
* Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread
* Bing (soft drink), a UK brand
* Bing cherry, a varie ...
). Microsoft profits were $5.2 billion, while Apple Inc. profits were $6 billion, on revenues of $14.5 billion and $24.7 billion respectively. Microsoft's Online Services Division has been continuously loss-making since 2006 and in Q1 2011 it lost $726 million. This follows a loss of $2.5 billion for the year 2010.
On July 20, 2012, Microsoft posted its first quarterly loss ever, despite earning record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year, with a net loss of $492 million due to a
writedown
A write-off is a reduction of the recognized value of something. In accounting, this is a recognition of the reduced or zero value of an asset. In income tax statements, this is a reduction of taxable income, as a recognition of certain expenses ...
related to the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 2007. As of January 2014, Microsoft's market capitalization stood at $314B, making it the 8th largest company in the world by market capitalization. On November 14, 2014, Microsoft overtook ExxonMobil to become the second most-valuable company by market capitalization, behind only
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
Its total market value was over $410B—with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000. In 2015,
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was esta ...
reported that Microsoft Corp had earnings abroad of $76.4 billion which were untaxed by the Internal Revenue Service. Under U.S. law, corporations don't pay income tax on overseas profits until the profits are brought into the United States.
In November 2018, the company won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring augmented reality (AR) headset technology into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers. The two-year contract may result in follow-on orders of more than 100,000 headsets, according to documentation describing the bidding process. One of the contract's tag lines for the augmented reality technology seems to be its ability to enable "25 bloodless battles before the 1st battle", suggesting that actual combat training is going to be an essential aspect of the augmented reality headset capabilities.
Subsidiaries
Microsoft is an international business. As such, it needs subsidiaries present in whatever national markets it chooses to harvest. An example is Microsoft Canada, which it established in 1985. Other countries have similar installations, to funnel profits back up to Redmond and to distribute the dividends to the holders of MSFT stock.
Marketing
In 2004, Microsoft commissioned research firms to do independent studies comparing the
total cost of ownership
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting or even ecolog ...
(TCO) of
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...
to
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
; the firms concluded that companies found Windows easier to administrate than Linux, thus those using Windows would administrate faster resulting in lower costs for their company (i.e. lower TCO). This spurred a wave of related studies; a study by the
Yankee Group
Yankee Group was an independent technology research and consulting firm, founded in 1970 by Howard Anderson. The firm "was one of the analyst industry’s most prestigious boutiques through the dot.com boom, with 70 analysts on the payroll in 2006 ...
concluded that upgrading from one version of Windows Server to another costs a fraction of the
switching costs Switching costs or switching barriers are terms used in microeconomics, strategic management, and marketing. They may be defined as the disadvantages or expenses consumers feel they experience, along with the economic and psychological costs of swit ...
from Windows Server to Linux, although companies surveyed noted the increased security and reliability of Linux servers and concern about being locked into using Microsoft products. Another study, released by the
Open Source Development Labs
Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was a non-profit organization supported by a consortium to promote Linux for enterprise computing. Founded in 2000, OSDL positioned itself as an independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterpris ...
, claimed that the Microsoft studies were "simply outdated and one-sided" and their survey concluded that the TCO of Linux was lower due to Linux administrators managing more servers on average and other reasons.
As part of the "Get the Facts" campaign, Microsoft highlighted the
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...
trading platform that it had developed in partnership with Accenture for the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...
, claiming that it provided " five nines" reliability. After suffering extended downtime and unreliability the London Stock Exchange announced in 2009 that it was planning to drop its Microsoft solution and switch to a Linux-based one in 2010.
In 2012, Microsoft hired a political pollster named Mark Penn, whom ''The New York Times'' called "famous for bulldozing" his political opponents as Executive Vice-president, Advertising and Strategy. Penn created a series of negative advertisements targeting one of Microsoft's chief competitors,
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
. The advertisements, called "
Scroogled
''Scroogled'' (a portmanteau of "screwed" and "Google")
was a Microsoft attack advertising campaign that ran between November 2012 and 2014. Created by Mark Penn, the campaign sought primarily to attack a competing company, Google, by pointing ...
", attempt to make the case that Google is "screwing" consumers with search results rigged to favor Google's paid advertisers, that
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...
violates the privacy of its users to place ad results related to the content of their emails and shopping results, which favor Google products. Tech publications like TechCrunch have been highly critical of the advertising campaign, while Google employees have embraced it.
Layoffs
In July 2014, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 18,000 employees. Microsoft employed 127,104 people as of June 5, 2014, making this about a 14 percent reduction of its workforce as the biggest Microsoft lay off ever. This included 12,500 professional and factory personnel. Previously, Microsoft had eliminated 5,800 jobs in 2009 in line with the
Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...
of 2008–2017. In September 2014, Microsoft laid off 2,100 people, including 747 people in the Seattle–Redmond area, where the company is headquartered. The firings came as a second wave of the layoffs that were previously announced. This brought the total number to over 15,000 out of the 18,000 expected cuts. In October 2014, Microsoft revealed that it was almost done with the elimination of 18,000 employees, which was its largest-ever layoff sweep. In July 2015, Microsoft announced another 7,800 job cuts in the next several months. In May 2016, Microsoft announced another 1,850 job cuts mostly in its Nokia mobile phone division. As a result, the company will record an impairment and restructuring charge of approximately $950 million, of which approximately $200 million will relate to severance payments.
United States government
Microsoft provides information about reported bugs in their software to intelligence agencies of the United States government, prior to the public release of the fix. A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that the corporation runs several programs that facilitate the sharing of such information with the U.S. government. Following media reports about
PRISM
Prism usually refers to:
* Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light
* Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron
Prism may also refer to:
Science and mathematics
* Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...
, NSA's massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. According to leaks of said program, Microsoft joined the PRISM program in 2007. However, in June 2013, an official statement from Microsoft flatly denied their participation in the program:
During the first six months of 2013, Microsoft received requests that affected between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts. In December 2013, the company made statement to further emphasize the fact that they take their customers' privacy and
data protection
Information privacy is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, contextual information norms, and the legal and political issues surrounding them. It is also known as data pr ...
very seriously, even saying that "government snooping potentially now constitutes an '
advanced persistent threat
An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may ...
,' alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks". The statement also marked the beginning of three-part program to enhance Microsoft's encryption and transparency efforts. On July 1, 2014, as part of this program they opened the first (of many) Microsoft Transparency Center, which provides "participating governments with the ability to review
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...
for our key products, assure themselves of their software integrity, and confirm there are no " back doors." Microsoft has also argued that the
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
should enact strong privacy regulations to protect consumer data.
In April 2016, the company Microsoft v. United States (2016), sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company's and customers' rights. Microsoft argued that it was unconstitutional for the government to indefinitely ban Microsoft from informing its users that the government was requesting their emails and other documents and that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Fourth Amendment made it so people or businesses had the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property. On October 23, 2017, Microsoft said it would drop the lawsuit as a result of a policy change by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ). The DoJ had "changed data request rules on alerting the Internet users about agencies accessing their information."
Corporate identity
Corporate culture
Technical references for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as ''Microsoft Systems Journal'' (MSJ) are available through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software. In April 2004, Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, titled Channel 9 (Microsoft), Channel 9, that provides a wiki and an Internet forum. Another community site that provides daily Podcast#Video podcasts, videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006. Free technical support is traditionally provided through online Usenet newsgroups, and CompuServe in the past, monitored by Microsoft employees; there can be several newsgroups for a single product. Helpful people can be elected by peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits.
Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression "eating your own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using pre-release and beta versions of products inside Microsoft in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations. This is usually shortened to just "dog food" and is used as a noun, verb, and adjective. Another bit of jargon, FYIFV or FYIV ("Fuck You, I'm [Fully] Vested"), is used by an employee to indicate they are financial independence, financially independent and can avoid work anytime they wish.
Microsoft is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H-1B visas, which allows companies in the U.S. to employ certain foreign workers. Bill Gates claims the cap on H1B visas makes it difficult to hire employees for the company, stating "I'd certainly get rid of the H1B cap" in 2005. Critics of H1B visas argue that relaxing the limits would result in increased unemployment for U.S. citizens due to H1B workers working for lower salaries. The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a report of how progressive the organization deems company policies towards LGBT employees, rated Microsoft as 87% from 2002 to 2004 and as 100% from 2005 to 2010 after they allowed gender expression.
In August 2018, Microsoft implemented a policy for all companies providing subcontractors to require 12 weeks of paid parental leave to each employee. This expands on the former requirement from 2015 requiring 15 days of paid vacation and sick leave each year. In 2015, Microsoft established its own parental leave policy to allow 12 weeks off for parental leave with an additional 8 weeks for the parent who gave birth.
Environment
In 2011, Greenpeace released a report rating the top ten big brands in
cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
on their sources of electricity for their data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase. Phil Radford of Greenpeace said "we are concerned that this new explosion in electricity use could lock us into old, polluting energy sources instead of the clean energy available today," and called on "Amazon, Microsoft and other leaders of the information-technology industry must embrace clean energy to power their cloud-based data centers." In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers. Microsoft is ranked on the 17th place in Greenpeace's ''Guide to Greener Electronics'' (16th Edition) that ranks 18 electronics manufacturers according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling, and climate change. Microsoft's timeline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products is 2012 but its commitment to phasing out Polyvinyl chloride, PVC is not clear. As of January 2011, it has no products that are completely free from PVC and BFRs.
Microsoft's main U.S. campus received a silver certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program in 2008, and it installed over 2,000 solar panels on top of its buildings at its Silicon Valley campus, generating approximately 15 percent of the total energy needed by the facilities in April 2005. Microsoft makes use of alternative forms of transit. It created one of the world's largest private bus systems, the "Connector", to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the "Shuttle Connect" uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel. The company also subsidizes regional public transport, provided by Sound Transit and King County Metro, as an incentive. In February 2010, however, Microsoft took a stance against adding additional public transport and high-occupancy vehicle lane, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to the Washington State Route 520, State Route 520 and Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, its floating bridge connecting Redmond to Seattle; the company did not want to delay the construction any further. Microsoft was ranked number 1 in the list of the World's Best Multinational Workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute in 2011. In January 2020, the company promised the carbon dioxide removal of all carbon that it has emitted since its foundation in 1975. On October 9, 2020, Microsoft permanently allowed remote work.
In January 2021, the company announced on Twitter to join the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which engages the cloud infrastructure and data centers industries to reach carbon neutrality in Europe by 2030.
Headquarters
The corporate headquarters, informally known as the
Microsoft Redmond campus
The Microsoft campus is the corporate headquarters of Microsoft, located in Redmond, Washington, United States, a part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, shortly before ...
, is located at One Microsoft Way in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, weeks before the company went public on March 13. The headquarters has since experienced multiple expansions since its establishment. It is estimated to encompass over 8 million ft2 (750,000 m2) of office space and 30,000–40,000 employees. Additional offices are located in Bellevue, Washington, Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide). The company is planning to upgrade its Mountain View, California, campus on a grand scale. The company has occupied this campus since 1981. In 2016, the company bought the campus, with plans to renovate and expand it by 25%. Microsoft operates an East Coast headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Flagship stores
On October 26, 2015, the company opened its retail location on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The location features a five-story glass storefront and is 22,270 square feet. As per company executives, Microsoft had been on the lookout for a flagship location since 2009. The company's retail locations are part of a greater
strategy to help build a connection with its consumers. The
opening of the store coincided with the launch of the Surface Book and Surface
Pro 4. On November 12, 2015, Microsoft opened a second flagship store, located in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall.
Logo
Microsoft adopted the so-called "''Pac-Man'' Logo," designed by Scott Baker, in 1987. Baker stated "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the ''o'' and ''s'' to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed." Dave Norris ran an internal joke campaign to save the old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter ''O'', nicknamed the ''blibbet'', but it was discarded. Microsoft's logo with the tagline "Your potential. Our passion."—below the main corporate name—is based on a slogan Microsoft used in 2008. In 2002, the company started using the logo in the United States and eventually started a television campaign with the slogan, changed from the previous tagline of ''"Where do you want to go today?"'' During the private MGX (Microsoft Global Exchange) conference in 2010, Microsoft unveiled the company's next tagline, ''"Be What's Next."'' They also had a slogan/tagline "Making it all make sense."
On August 23, 2012, Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo at the opening of its 23rd Microsoft store in Boston, indicating the company's shift of focus from the classic style to the tile-centric modern interface, which it uses/will use on the Windows Phone platform, Xbox 360, Windows 8 and the upcoming Office Suites. The new logo also includes four squares with the colors of the then-current Windows logo which have been used to represent Microsoft's four major products: Windows (blue), Office (red), Xbox (green) and Bing (yellow). The logo also resembles the opening of one of the commercials for
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...
.
File:Microsoft logo (1975).svg, 1975–1980: First Microsoft logo, in 1975
File:Microsoft logo (1980).svg, 1980–1982: Second Microsoft logo, in 1980
File:Microsoft Logo Historical.svg, 1982–1987: Third Microsoft logo, in 1982
File:Microsoft logo (1987).svg, 1987–2012: Microsoft "Pac-Man" logo, designed by Scott Baker and used from 1987 to 2012
File:Microsoft logo and wordmark.svg, 2012–present: Fifth Microsoft logo, introduced on August 23, 2012
Sponsorship
The company was the official jersey sponsor of Finland national basketball team, Finland's national basketball team at EuroBasket 2015.
The company was a major sponsor of the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT (2017 WRC, 2017-2020 World Rally Championship, 2020).
The company was a sponsor of the Renault F1 Team (2016 Formula One World Championship, 2016-2020 Formula One World Championship, 2020).
Philanthropy
During the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, Microsoft's president, Brad Smith (American lawyer), Brad Smith, announced that an initial batch of supplies, including 15,000 protection goggles, infrared thermometers, medical caps, and protective suits, was donated to Seattle, with further aid to come soon.
During 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Microsoft started monitoring cyberattacks on behalf of the Russian government and Russia-backed hackers. In June 2022, Microsoft published the report on Russian cyber attacks, and concluded that state-backed Russian hackers "have engaged in "strategic espionage" against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups" in 42 countries supporting Kyiv.
Controversies
Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Frequently criticized are the ease of use,
robustness
Robustness is the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. When it is transposed into a system, it refers to the ability of tolerating perturbations that might affect the system’s functional body. In the same line ''robustness'' ca ...
, and
security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...
of the company's software. They've also been criticized for the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as "temporary," and therefore without medical benefits), the use of forced retention tactics, which means that employees would be sued if they tried to leave. Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to Occupational burnout, burnout within just a few years of joining the company. The company is often referred to as a "Velvet Sweatshop", a term which originated in a 1989 ''Seattle Times'' article, and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft's own employees. This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health.
As reported by several news outlets, an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft based in the Republic of Ireland declared £220 bn in profits but paid no corporation tax for the year 2020. This is due to the company being tax resident in Bermuda as mentioned in the accounts for 'Microsoft Round Island One, a subsidiary that collects license fees from the use of Microsoft software worldwide. Dame Margaret Hodge, a Labour Party (UK), Labour Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), MP in the UK said, "It is unsurprising – yet still shocking – that massively wealthy global corporations openly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the profits they make in the countries where they undertake business".
In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company had diverted more than $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico using a mechanism structured to make it seem as if the company was unprofitable on paper. As a result, the company paid a tax rate on those profits of "nearly 0%." When the Internal Revenue Service audited these transactions, ProPublica reported that Microsoft aggressively fought back, including successfully lobbying Congress to change the law to make it harder for the agency to conduct audits of large corporations.
"Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the United States Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice found that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with Proprietary software, proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage competitors. Microsoft is frequently accused of using anticompetitive tactics and abusing its monopolistic power. People who use their products and services often end up becoming dependent on them, a process is known as vendor lock-in.
Microsoft was the first company to participate in PRISM (surveillance program), the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by ''The Guardian'' and ''The Washington Post'' in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak. The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant. Microsoft has denied participation in such a program.
Jesse Jackson believes Microsoft should hire more minorities and women. In 2015, he praised Microsoft for appointing two women to its board of directors.
Licensing arrangements for service providers
The Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement, or SPLA, is a mechanism by which service providers and independent software vendors (ISVs), who license Microsoft products on a monthly basis, are able to provide software services and Dedicated hosting service, hosting services to end-users. The SPLA can be customized to suit the solution being offered and the customers using it.
See also
* List of Microsoft software
* List of Microsoft hardware
* List of investments by Microsoft Corporation
* List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft
* Microsoft engineering groups
* Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
References
External links
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