Microsoft

The Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation that produces computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best-known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its major hardware products are the Xbox video game console and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranks 21st in the 2020 Fortune 500 ranking of the largest corporations in the United States by total revenue; It was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2016. It is supported by Amazon, Google (Alphabet), Apple, and Facebook (Meta) as well as in the U.S. It is considered one of the top five companies in the information technology industry.

Microsoft (the term is a portmanteau of "microcomputer software") was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It came to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS. -DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and its subsequent increase in share value created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has become increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made several corporate acquisitions, the largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by Skype Technologies in May 2011. was acquired for $8.5 billion.

As of 2015, Microsoft is the market leader in the IBM PC compatible 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 (with Bing), the digital services market (via MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing. does. (blue), and software development (Visual Studio).

Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 and later conceived the "devices and services" strategy. This came to the fore with Microsoft's acquisition of Danger Inc. in 2008, entering the personal computer production market first with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of tablet computers in June 2012, and later with the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division manufactured through Microsoft Mobile. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has stepped back on hardware and instead focused on cloud computing, a move that pushed the company's shares to their highest value since December 1999.

Previously ousted by Apple in 2010, Microsoft reclaimed its position as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world in 2018. In April 2019, Microsoft reached a trillion-dollar market cap, becoming the third US public company after Apple and Amazon to be valued at more than $1 trillion, respectively. As of 2020, Microsoft has the third largest global brand valuation.

History

1972–1985: Founding

Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to build a business using their skills in computer programming. In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Gates attended Harvard University, while Allen earned a degree in computer science at Washington State University, although he later left to work at Honeywell. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which prompted Allen to suggest that they could program a basic interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed 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 he demonstrated it to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 1975. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as the Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested the name "Micro-Soft" which is short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company entered into an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, which resulted in its ASCII becoming Microsoft's first international office. In January 1979, Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington.

Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its version of Unix, called Xenix, but it was MS-DOS that cemented the company's dominance. IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of CP/M OS to be used in the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone from Seattle Computer Products called 86-DOS, which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to IBM PC DOS. Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, so other companies had to reverse engineer it for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatible, but there was no such restriction applied to the operating system. Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating system vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division called Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's disease. Allen claimed in The Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-Founder of Microsoft that Gates wanted to reduce his stake in the company when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease because he didn't think 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

Despite having begun jointly developing OS/2 with IBM the previous August, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows on 20 November 1985 as a graphical extension for MS-DOS. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13, resulting in an increase in stock from Microsoft employees to an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission investigated Microsoft for possible collusion due to its partnership with IBM, which marks the beginning of more than a decade of legal action and conflict with the government. Meanwhile, the company was working on Microsoft Windows NT, which was based on a copy of their OS/2 code. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and 32-bit Win32 Application Programming Interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows. Microsoft informed IBM about Windows NT, and the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.

In 1990, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office suite that bundled separate applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. On May 22, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, which included 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 July 27, 1994, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division filed a competitive effects statement stating: "Beginning in 1988 and continuing through July 15, 1994, Microsoft has allowed several OEMs to execute anti-competitive effects per processor license. Under a per-processor license, an OEM pays a royalty to Microsoft for each computer that contains a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. Royalty payments to Microsoft when a Microsoft product is not being used as a penalty or tax on OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's per-processor license has been increased in use."

1995–2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox

Following Bill Gates' internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide 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 market dominance. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 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 at first intended to be a competitor to the Internet, and (for OEMs) Internet Explorer, a Web browser. Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes, because the boxes were printed before the team finished the Web browser, and instead was included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what The New York Times 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's NBC unit created a new 24/7 cable news channel, MSNBC. Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants. 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 with Windows.

On January 13, 2000, Bill Gates handed over the CEO position to Gates' old college friend and company employee Steve Ballmer, creating a new position for himself as a chief software architect. Various companies, including Microsoft, formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to (among other things) enhance security and protect intellectual property through the identification of changes to hardware and software. Critics denounced the alliance as a way of enforcing indiscriminate restrictions on the way the software is used by consumers, and how computers behave, and as a form of digital rights management: for example, scenarios where a computer is not only its owner. It is safe for, but also safe against its owner. A judgment was delivered on April 3, 2000, in the case of the United States v. Microsoft Corporation, which called the company an "outrageous monopoly". Microsoft later entered into a settlement with the US Department of Justice in 2004. On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, integrating the mainstream and NT lines of the OS under the NT codebase. 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 took antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abusing its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a €497 million ($613 million) decision and allowing Microsoft to run Windows XP without Windows Media Player. The need to produce new versions of Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. In November 2005, the company's second video game console, the Xbox 360, was released. There were two versions, a basic edition for $299.99 and a deluxe edition for $399.99.

Increasingly present in the hardware business after the Xbox, Microsoft released the Zune series of digital media players in 2006, a successor to its previous software platform, Portable Media Center. These expanded on Microsoft's previous hardware commitments since its original Microsoft mouse in 1983; As of 2007, the company sold the best-selling wired keyboard (Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000), mouse (IntelliMouse), and desktop webcam (LifeCam) in the United States. That year the company also launched the Surface "Digital Tablet" later renamed PixelSense.

2007–2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Store

Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows Vista, focused on features, security, and a redesigned user interface called Aero. Microsoft Office 2007, released at the same time, featured a "ribbon" user interface that was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both products helped it to produce a record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed a further fine of €899 million ($1.4 billion) on February 27, 2008, for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 ruling, saying the company alleged critical issues with its workgroup and backoffice servers. Competitor unfair price for information. Microsoft said it complied and that "these fines are in line with previous issues that have been resolved". 2007 also saw the creation of a multi-core unit at Microsoft, following in the footsteps of server companies such as Sun and IBM.

Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision was announced in June 2006, while retaining other company-related positions in addition to being an advisor to the company on key projects. The Azure Services Platform, the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, was launched on October 27, 2008. On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intention to open a chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail Microsoft Store was opened in Scottsdale, Arizona; Windows 7 was officially released to the public on the same day. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with easier-to-use features and performance improvements, not a wider reworking of Windows.

As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft struggled with its rivals to provide a modern smartphone operating system, falling behind Apple and Google-sponsored Android in the United States. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped its old flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS released in October of that year. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography, and iconography, using the concept of minimalism. Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones that use the Windows Phone OS. It began an alliance with Nokia in 2011 and Microsoft teamed up with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained a longtime partner with Windows Mobile OEM HTC. Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation, which started on March 23, 2011. Fellow founders were Google, HP Networking, Yahoo!, Verizon Communications, Deutsche Telekom, and 17 other companies. This non-profit organization focuses on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to accelerate innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking sectors.

2011-2014: Windows 8/8.1, Xbox One, Outlook.com, and Surface devices

Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft underwent a gradual rebranding of its product range during 2011 and 2012, with the corporation's logo, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers, in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview was released on September 13, which was later replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and was released to the public in May. Became the first computer whose hardware was made by Microsoft. On June 25, Microsoft paid US$1.2 billion to buy the social network Yammer. On July 31, they launched the Outlook.com webmail service to rival Gmail. On 4 September 2012, Microsoft released Windows Server 2012.

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 with Windows, part of a new-look MSN. On 26 October 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface. Three days later, Windows Phone 8 was launched. To cope with the potential for increased demand for products and services, Microsoft opened several "holiday stores" across the US to complement the growing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores it opened in 2012. On March 29, 2013, Microsoft launched a patent tracker.

In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft to develop a domain awareness system that is used for police surveillance in New York City.

A motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller, the Kinect, first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the Xbox One video game console. In May 2013 the Kinect's capabilities were revealed: an ultra-wide 1080p camera, an infrared sensor, high-end processing power, and the ability to differentiate between fine movements (such as thumb motion) that work in the dark due to high-end processing power and new software. capacity, and determines the user's heart rate by looking at his face. Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 suggesting that the corporation could use the Kinect camera system to monitor television viewers' behavior with plans to make the viewing experience more interactive. On July 19, 2013, Microsoft's shares suffered their biggest one-day percentage sell-off since the year 2000, after its fourth-quarter report sparked concern among investors over the poor performance of both Windows 8 and Surface tablets. Microsoft lost more than US$32 billion.

In line with the mature 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 reduction. On September 3, 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy Nokia's mobile unit for $7 billion, after Amy Hood assumed the role of CFO.

2014–2020: Windows 10, Microsoft Edge and HoloLens

On 4 February 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella, who had previously headed Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division. That same day, John W. Thompson took over as chairman, replacing Bill Gates, who continued to participate as technology advisor. Thompson became the second president in the history of Microsoft. On 25 April 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $7.2 billion. The name of this new subsidiary was changed to Microsoft Mobile Oy. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft acquired video game development company Mojang, best known for Minecraft, 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 its first interactive whiteboard, the Microsoft Surface Hub. On July 29, 2015, Windows 10 was released, with its server sibling, Windows Server 2016, released in September 2016. In Q1 2015, Microsoft was the third-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, selling 33 million units (7.2% of all). While most of them (at least 75%) do not run any version of Windows Phone—those other phones are not classified as smartphones by Gartner—in the same time frame, there are 8 million Windows smartphones (of all smartphones). 2.5%) were created. By all manufacturers (but mostly by Microsoft). Microsoft's share of the US smartphone market was 2.7% in January 2016. The company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business during the summer of 2015, laying off 7,800 employees.

On March 1, 2016, after Microsoft announced the merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, Phil Spencer announced that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft's gaming in the future. On January 24, 2017, Microsoft demonstrated Intune for Education at the BETT 2017 Education Technology Conference in London. Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. In May 2016, the company announced that it was laying off 1,850 employees, and incurring $950 million in impairment and restructuring fees. In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project called Microsoft Azure Information Security. 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. Each Platinum membership costs US$500,000 per year. Some analysts considered this unthinkable ten years earlier, however, in 2001 then-CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux a "cancer". Microsoft plans to begin previewing 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 for CPU problems related to Intel's Meltdown security breach. The patch caused issues with Microsoft Azure virtual machines relying on Intel's CPU architecture. On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems. In February 2018, Microsoft discontinued notification support for its Windows Phone devices, which effectively ended firmware updates for the discontinued devices. In March 2018, Microsoft recalled Windows 10 S to switch to a mode for the Windows operating system, rather than a separate and unique operating system. In March the company also established guidelines that prohibit Office 365 users from using profanity in personal documents. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT license to celebrate the program's 20th anniversary. In April the company expressed its willingness to embrace open source initiatives by announcing Azure Sphere as its derivative of the Linux operating system. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 US intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. The project has been dubbed "Azure Government" and is related to the Joint Venture Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Monitoring Program. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of GitHub 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 replaced Microsoft Teams for free. In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy. It also unveiled Snapdragon 850 compatibility for Windows 10 on ARM architecture.

In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to build fish farming equipment using the Microsoft Azure application suite for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies related to water management. Developed by researchers at Kindai University, the water pump mechanism uses artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from data provided by the fish. The specific computer programs used in this process fall under Azure Machine Learning and Azure IoT Hub Platform. In September 2018, Microsoft discontinued Skype Classic. On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community, despite holding over 60,000 patents. In November 2018, Microsoft agreed to supply 100,000 Microsoft HoloLens headsets to the United States military to "enhance lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, make decisions, and engage in the face of an 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) core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. The project promotes the idea of ​​firmware as a service. That same month, Microsoft announced open-source implementations of Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which would allow the company to move toward transparent releases of the key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. In December the company discontinued the Microsoft Edge project in favor of a Chromium backend for its browser.

On February 20, 2019, Microsoft Corp said it would offer its cybersecurity service AccountGuard in 12 new markets in Europe, including Germany, France, and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers from political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company's war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army.

2020–present: Acquisitions, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 11

On March 26, 2020, Microsoft announced that it was acquiring Affirmed Networks for approximately $1.35 billion. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft indefinitely closed all of its retail stores due to health concerns. On July 22, 2020, Microsoft announced plans to shut down its Mixer service, moving existing partners to Facebook Gaming. On July 31, 2020, it was reported that Microsoft was in talks to acquire TikTok after the Trump administration ordered ByteDance to divest ownership of the application to the US. On August 3, 2020, following speculation over the deal, Donald Trump said that Microsoft could buy the application, although it should be completed by September 15, 2020, and that the United States Treasury Department would receive a share if it has to pass. On August 5, 2020, Microsoft closed its xCloud game streaming test for iOS devices. According to Microsoft, the future of xCloud on iOS is unclear and potentially out of Microsoft's hands. Apple has put a strict limit on "remote desktop clients," which means that applications are only allowed to connect to user-owned host devices or user-owned gaming consoles. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intention to acquire ZeniMax Media for approximately $7.5 billion, a deal expected to take place in the second half of the 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 value of the deal was $8.1 billion. On September 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that it has an exclusive license to use OpenAI's GPT-3 artificial intelligence language generator. The previous version of GPT-3, called GPT-2, made headlines for being "too dangerous to release" and had multiple capabilities, including website designing, prescribing medicine, answering questions, and writing articles. Included. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles.

In April 2021, Microsoft said it would buy Nuance Communications for about $16 billion in cash. In 2021, Microsoft's valuation approached $2 trillion, thanks to strong quarterly earnings from the COVID-19 pandemic. The growing need for remote work and distance learning fueled the demand for cloud-computing services and increased the company's gaming sales.

Microsoft announced Windows 11 during a live stream on June 24, 2021. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced it to be the final version of the Windows 10 operating system; It was scheduled to release in Fall 2021. It was released to the general public on October 5, 2021.

In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it had begun rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls to secure business communications using video conferencing software. Users can ensure that their calls are encrypted and can use a security code that must be verified by both parties on the call at the respective end. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies' progress against OKRs. Microsoft is planning to add Ally.io to its Viva family of employee experience products.