Microsoft Introduction :-
one of the most valuable public companies and one of the most valuable brands globally. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system and office software suite markets since the 1990s. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems and the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, which most notably include the Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet editor, and PowerPoint presentation program. Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network. The company also provides a range of consumer Internet services such as Bing web search, the MSN web portal, the Outlook.com (Hotmail) email service, and the Microsoft Store. In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. The company became influential in through software like Windows and has since expanded artificial intelligence into areas such as Internet services, cloud computing video gaming, and more. A Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue.
The Microsoft Company Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the PC operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. From 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS and 13 versions of Windows. The company’s 1986 initial public offering 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 its business. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. He oversaw the then-largest of Microsoft’s corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line the Surface in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia. Since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing and acquired LinkedIn in 2016. Under his direction, the company has expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022 and acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023. Microsoft became the third publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in April 2019. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices, and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. Microsoft has also been criticized for its role in providing services to Israel during the Gaza war.
The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems’s 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. Gates and Allen established Microsoft on 4 April 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, in January 1979.
Microsoft entered the operating system business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, licensed from AT&T Corporation a year before, but it was MS-DOS 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. 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. 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 for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. 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. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Microsoft Windows :-
Microsoft released Windows 1.0 on 20 November 1985 as a graphical extension for MS-DOS, despite having begun jointly developing OS/2 with IBM that August. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on 26 February 1986, and went public with an initial public offering at the NASDAQ exchange on 13 March 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 on 2 April 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, which was heavily based on its copy of the OS/2 code. It shipped on 21 July 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface making it easier to port from 16-bit Windows. Microsoft informed IBM of Windows NT, and the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.
In 1990, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office suite which bundled separate applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. On May 22, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 featuring streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor and both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas.
On 27 July 1994, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division filed a competitive impact statement stating that since 1988, Microsoft had increasingly induced OEMs to pay royalties under a per-processor license for microprocessors in their computers regardless of whether or not a Microsoft product was used.
The company released Windows 95 on 24 August 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, 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 MSN, which was intended to be a competitor to services such as CompuServe and AOL. The web browser Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail release of Windows 95, and was instead included in the later Microsoft Plus! pack, as well as with OEM releases of Windows 95.
On 13 January 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. Under Ballmer’s leadership, the company saw an increased focus on hardware products.
On 25 October 2001 The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the video game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million and requiring Microsoft to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player November 2005, the company’s second video game console, the Xbox 360, was released.
Window 7:-
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 and Google-sponsored Android in the United States. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped its aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone 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 in 2011 and Microsoft worked closely with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained partners with long-time Windows Mobile OEM HTC. Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation started on 23 March 2011. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing 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.
Window 8 :-
In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC, which it had run as a joint venture with NBC since 1996. In October 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, and Windows Phone 8. 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.
Windo 10 :-
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 had deemed this unthinkable ten years prior, however, as in 2001 then-CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux “cancer”.
Window 11 :-
In September 2021, it was announced that the company had acquired Take Lessons, an online platform that connects students and tutors in numerous subjects. The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing online education to large numbers of people. In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clip champ.
In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies’ progress against planning to incorporate it into its Viva family of employee experience products.