() (), is an
American Multinational Computer technology
Corporation with 76,000 employees in 102 countries and global annual
Revenue of
US $ 51.12
Billion as of 2007. It develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of
Software products for computing devices.
4 Headquartered in
Redmond ,
Washington ,
USA , its best selling products are the
Microsoft Windows Operating System and the
Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. These products have prominent positions in the
Desktop Computer market, with
Market Share estimates as high as 90% or more as of 2003 for Microsoft Office and 2006 for Microsoft Windows, in line with the company's original mission of "a computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software".
567891011
Founded to develop and sell business practices—both the
U.S. Justice Department and the
European Commission , among others, brought Microsoft to court for
Antitrust violations and software bundling.
15 homepage at the
United States Department Of Justice http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/04/382&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
See Also: History of Microsoft
Following the launch of the
Altair 8800 ,
Bill Gates called the creators of the new
Microcomputer ,
Micro Instrumentation And Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate an implementation of the
BASIC Programming Language for the system. After the demonstration, MITS agreed to distribute
Altair BASIC .
20 Gates left
Harvard University , moved to
Albuquerque, New Mexico where MITS was located, and founded Microsoft there. The name ''Microsoft'' first appears in print in the August 1977 issue of ''Byte Magazine'', and makes a mainstream appearance in an advertisement for the ''Ohio Scientific C1-P Computer'', which appeared in the May 10, 1979
Washington Post ;
Microsoft 1977 the actual ad can be seen at the ''Microsoft'' page of .
The company's first international office was founded on
November 1 ,
1978 , in Japan, entitled "
ASCII Microsoft" (now called "
Microsoft Japan "). On
January 1 ,
1979 , the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in
Bellevue, Washington .
Steve Ballmer joined the company on
June 11 ,
1980 , and later succeeded Bill Gates as
CEO .
DOS (
Disk Operating System) was the operating system that brought the company its real success. On
August 12 ,
1981 , after negotiations with
Digital Research failed,
IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the
CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the upcoming
IBM Personal Computer (PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a
CP/M clone called
86-DOS from
Seattle Computer Products , which IBM renamed to
PC-DOS . Later, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones after
Columbia Data Products successfully cloned the IBM
BIOS , and by aggressively marketing
MS-DOS to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft rose from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry.
2122>
2324252627 The company expanded into new markets with the release of the ''Microsoft Mouse'' in
1983 , as well as a publishing division named
Microsoft Press .
In August 1985, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called
OS/2 .
28 On
November 20 ,
1985 , Microsoft released its first retail version of
Microsoft Windows , originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system. On
March 13 ,
1986 the company went public with an IPO, priced at US $28.00 by the end of the trading day. In 1987, Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to
OEMs .
29 See May 1987 releases.
In
1989 , Microsoft introduced its most successful office product,
Microsoft Office . This was a bundle of separate office productivity applications, such as
Microsoft Word and
Microsoft Excel . On
May 22 ,
1990 Microsoft launched
Windows 3.0 .
31 The new version of Microsoft's operating system boasted such new features as streamlined
User Interface graphics and improved
Protected Mode capability for the
Intel 386 processor; it sold over 100,000 copies in two weeks.
32 Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows.
33 In the ensuing years, the popularity of OS/2 declined, and Windows quickly became the favored PC platform.
During the transition from MS-DOS to Windows, the success of Microsoft's product
Microsoft Office allowed the company to gain ground on application-software competitors, such as
WordPerfect and
Lotus 1-2-3 .
3435 According to
The Register , Novell, an owner of WordPerfect for a time, alleged that Microsoft used its inside knowledge of the DOS and Windows kernels and of undocumented
Application Programming Interface features to make Office perform better than its competitors.
36 Eventually, Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with a
Market Share far exceeding that of its competitors.
37
In 1993, Microsoft released
Windows NT 3.1 , a server-based operating system with a similar user interface to consumer versions of the operating system, but with an entirely different kernel. In 1995, Microsoft released
Windows 95 , a new version of the company's flagship operating system which featured a completely new user interface, including a novel
Start Button ; more than a million copies of Microsoft Windows 95 were sold in the first four days after its release. The company later released its
Web Browser ,
Internet Explorer , with the Windows 95 Plus! Pack in August 1995 and subsequent Windows versions.
38
In the mid-90s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into
Computer Network ing and the
World Wide Web . On
August 24 1995 , it launched a major
Online Service ,
MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to
AOL . MSN became an umbrella service for Microsoft's online services.
39 The company continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with a joint venture with
NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news station,
MSNBC .
40 Microsoft entered the personal digital assistant (PDA) market in November with
Windows CE 1.0 , a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, specifically designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other small computers.
41 Later in 1997,
Internet Explorer 4.0 was released for both
Mac OS and Windows, marking the beginning of the takeover of the browser market from rival
Netscape . In October, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal
District Court in which they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in 1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.
introduced a
New Interface , along with other
New Features . This screenshot shows Windows XP Professional.]]
The year 1998 was significant in Microsoft's history, with Bill Gates appointing
Steve Ballmer as president of Microsoft but remaining as Chair and CEO himself. The company released
Windows 98 , an update to Windows 95 that incorporated a number of Internet-focused features and support for new types of devices. On
April 3 2000 , a judgment was handed down in the case of
United States V. Microsoft , calling the company an "abusive monopoly" and forcing the company to split into two separate units. Part of this ruling was later overturned by a federal
Appeals Court , and eventually settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001.
In 2001, Microsoft released
Windows XP , the first version that encompassed the features of both its business and home product lines. XP introduced a new
Graphical User Interface , the first such change since Windows 95.
42 Later, with the release of the
Xbox Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar
Game Console market dominated by
Sony and
Nintendo . Microsoft encountered more turmoil in March 2004 when antitrust legal action was brought against it by the
European Union for allegedly abusing its market dominance (see
European Union Microsoft Antitrust Case ), eventually resulting in a judgement to produce a new version of its Windows XP platform—called Windows XP Home Edition N—that did not include its
Windows Media Player .
4344 (from the official EU website)
In 2006, Bill Gates announced a two year transition period from his role as Chief
Software Architect , which would be taken by
Ray Ozzie , and planned to remain the company's chairman, head of the Board of Directors and act as an adviser on key projects.
45 As of July 2007,
Windows Vista is Microsoft's latest operating system, released in January 2007.
Microsoft Office 2007 was released at the same time; its "
Ribbon " user interface is a significant departure from its predecessors.
To be more precise in tracking performance of each unit and delegating responsibility, Microsoft reorganized into seven core business groups—each an independent financial entity—in April 2002. Later, on and Home and Entertainment groups were merged into the ''Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division''.
4647
, one of the company's best-known products.]]
This division produces Microsoft's
Flagship product, the Windows operating system. It has been produced in many versions, including
Windows 3.1 ,
Windows 95 ,
Windows 98 ,
Windows 2000 ,
Windows 2000 Server ,
Windows Me ,
Windows Server 2003 ,
Windows XP and
Windows Vista . Almost all
IBM Compatible Personal Computers come with Windows preinstalled. The current desktop version of Windows is Windows Vista. The
Online Service MSN, the cable television station
MSNBC and the Microsoft online magazine ''Slate'' are all part of this division. (''Slate'' was acquired by ''
The Washington Post '' on
December 21 ,
2004 .) At the end of 1997, Microsoft acquired
Hotmail , the most popular
Webmail service, which it rebranded as "MSN Hotmail". In 1999, Microsoft introduced
MSN Messenger , an
Instant Messaging client, to compete with the popular
AOL Instant Messenger . Along with Windows Vista, MSN Messenger is to become
Windows Live Messenger .
Microsoft Visual Studio is the company's set of
Programming tools and
Compilers . The software product is GUI-oriented and links easily with the
Windows API s, but must be specially configured if used with non-Microsoft libraries. The current version is
Visual Studio 2005 . The previous version,
Visual Studio .Net 2003, was named after the .NET initiative, a Microsoft marketing initiative covering a number of technologies. Microsoft's definition of .NET continues to evolve. As of 2004, .NET aims to ease the development of Microsoft Windows-based applications that use the Internet, by deploying a new Microsoft communications system, ''Indigo'' (now renamed
Windows Communication Foundation ). This is intended to address some issues previously introduced by Microsoft's DLL design, which made it difficult, even impossible in some situations, to manage, install multiple versions of complex
Software Package s on the same system (see
DLL-hell ), and provide a more consistent development platform for all Windows applications (see
Common Language Infrastructure ). In addition, the Company established a set of certification programs to recognize individuals who have expertise in its software and solutions. Similar to offerings from
Cisco ,
Sun Microsystems ,
Novell , IBM, and
Oracle Corporation , these tests are designed to identify a minimal set of proficiencies in a specific role; this includes developers (
"Microsoft Certified Solution Developer" ), system/network analysts (
"Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer" ), trainers ("
Microsoft Certified Trainers ") and administrators (
"Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator" and
"Microsoft Certified Database Administrator" ).
Microsoft offers a suite of
Server software, entitled
Windows Server System .
Windows Server 2003 , an operating system for network servers, is the core of the Windows Server System line. Another server product,
Systems Management Server , is a collection of tools providing remote-control abilities, patch management, software distribution and a hardware/software inventory. Other server products include:
The Microsoft Business Division produces
Microsoft Office , which is the company's line of office software. The software product includes
Word (a word processor),
Access (a personal relational database application),
Excel (a
Spreadsheet program),
Outlook (Windows-only
Groupware , frequently used with
Exchange Server ),
PowerPoint (presentation software), and
Publisher (
Desktop Publishing Software ). A number of other products were added later with the release of Office 2003 including
Visio ,
Project ,
MapPoint ,
InfoPath and
OneNote .
The division focuses on developing financial and business management software for companies. These products include products formerly produced by the Business Solutions Group, which was created in April 2001 with the acquisition of
Great Plains . Subsequently,
Navision was acquired to provide a similar entry into the European market, resulting in the planned release of
Microsoft Dynamics NAV in 2006. The group markets
Axapta and Solomon, catering to similar markets, which is scheduled to be combined with the Navision and Great Plains lines into a common platform called
Microsoft Dynamics .
, Microsoft's second system in the gaming console market.]]
Microsoft has attempted to expand the Windows brand into many other markets, with products such as
Windows CE for
PDAs and its "Windows-powered" Smartphone products. Microsoft initially entered the mobile market through Windows CE for
Handheld Device s, which today has developed into
Windows Mobile 6. The focus of the operating system is on devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, appliances and cars. The company produces
MSN TV , formerly
WebTV , a television-based
Internet Appliance . Microsoft used to sell a set-top
Digital Video Recorder (DVR) called the
UltimateTV , which allowed users to record up to 35 hours of television programming from a
Direct-to-home Satellite Television provider
DirecTV . This was the main competition in the UK for
British Sky Broadcasting 's (BSkyB) SKY + service, owned by
Rupert Murdoch . UltimateTV has since been discontinued, with DirecTV instead opting to market DVRs from
TiVo Inc. before later switching to their own
DVR brand.
Microsoft sells
Computer Games that run on Windows PCs, including titles such as ''
Age Of Empires '', ''
Halo '' and the ''
Microsoft Flight Simulator '' series. It produces a line of
Reference Work s that include
Encyclopedia s and
Atlases , under the name Encarta.
Microsoft Zone hosts free premium and retail games where players can compete against each other and in tournaments. Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar
Game Console market dominated by
Sony and
Nintendo in late 2001,
48 with the release of the
Xbox . The company develops and publishes its own video games for this console, with the help of its
Microsoft Game Studios subsidiary, in addition to
Third-party Xbox
Video Game Publisher s such as
Electronic Arts and
Activision , who pay a license fee to publish games for the system. The Xbox also has a successor in the
Xbox 360 , released on
2005-11-22 in
North America and other countries.
4950 With the
Xbox 360 , Microsoft hopes to compensate for the losses incurred with the original
Xbox . However, Microsoft made some decisions considered controversial in the video
Gaming Community , such as selling two different versions of the system, as well as providing
Backward Compatibility with only particular Xbox titles.
5152 In addition to the Xbox line of products, Microsoft also markets a number of other computing-related hardware products as well, including
Mice ,
Keyboards ,
Joystick s, and
Gamepad s, along with other
Game Controller s, the production of which is
Outsourced in most cases.
Microsoft has often been described as having a developer-centric business culture. A great deal of time and money is spent each year on recruiting young university-trained
Software Developer s and on keeping them in the company. For example, while many software companies often place an entry-level software developer in a cubicle desk within a large office space filled with other cubicles, Microsoft assigns a private or semiprivate closed office to every developer or pair of developers. In addition, key
Decision Makers at every level are either developers or former developers. In a sense, the software developers at Microsoft are considered the "stars" of the company in the same way that the sales staff at IBM are considered the "stars" of their company.
Within Microsoft the expression
"eating Our Own Dog Food" is used to describe the policy of using the latest Microsoft products inside the company in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations. Only prerelease and beta versions of products are considered dog food.
53 This is usually shortened to just "dogfood" and is used as noun, verb, and adjective. The company is also known for their hiring process, dubbed the "
Microsoft Interview ", which is notorious for off-the-wall questions such as "Why is a
Manhole Cover round?" and is a process often mimicked in other organizations, although these types of questions are rarer now than they were in the past.
54 For fun, Microsoft also hosts the
Microsoft Puzzle Hunt , an annual
Puzzle Hunt (a live puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles) held at the Redmond campus.
As of 2006, Microsoft employees, not including Bill Gates, have given over $2.5bn dollars to
Non-profit Organization s worldwide, making Microsoft the worldwide top company in per-employee donations.
55 Starting around 2005, a blogger claiming to be an employee of Microsoft, dubbing itself
Mini-Microsoft , claims that the company has become a "passionless, process-ridden, lumbering idiot," due in part to ineffective management, and calls for the company to be downsized.
5657 In January 2007, the Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal Reputation Quotient survey came to the conclusion that Microsoft had the world's best corporate reputation, citing strong financial performance, vision & leadership, workplace environment rankings, and the charitable deeds of the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .
58
Technical reference for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as ''Microsoft Systems Journal'' (or MSJ) are available through the Microsoft Developer Network, often called
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.
5960 In recent years, Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, entitled
Channel9 , which provides many modern features such as a
Wiki and an
Internet Forum .
61 Another community site that provides daily
Videocast s and other services, ''On10.net'', launched on March 3, 2006.
62
Most free technical support available through Microsoft is provided through online
Usenet Newsgroups (in the early days it was also provided on
CompuServe ). There are several of these newsgroups for nearly every product Microsoft provides, and often they are monitored by Microsoft employees. People who are helpful on the newsgroups can be elected by other peers or Microsoft employees for
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles people to a sort of special social status, in addition to possibilities for awards and other benefits.
The company is run by a Board of Directors consisting of ten people, made up of mostly company outsiders (as is customary for ,
James Cash, Jr. ,
Dina Dublon ,
Bill Gates ,
Raymond Gilmartin ,
Reed Hastings ,
David Marquardt ,
Charles Noski ,
Helmut Panke , and
Jon Shirley .
63 The ten board members are elected every year at the annual
Shareholder s' meeting, and those who do not get a majority of votes must submit a
Resignation to the board, which will subsequently choose whether or not to accept the resignation. There are five committees within the board which 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 Finance Committee, which handles
Financial matters such as proposing mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including nomination of the board; and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating
Antitrust laws.
6465
There are several other aspects to the corporate structure of Microsoft. For worldwide matters there is the Executive Team, made up of sixteen company officers across the globe, which is charged with various duties including making sure employees understand Microsoft's culture of business. The sixteen officers of the Executive Team include the Chairman and
Chief Software Architect , the CEO, the
General Counsel and Secretary, the
CFO , senior and group vice presidents from the business units, the CEO of the Europe, the Middle East and Africa regions; and the heads of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services;
Human Resources ; and Corporate Marketing. In addition to the Executive Team there is also the Corporate Staff Council, which handles all major staff functions of the company, including approving corporate policies. The Corporate Staff Council is made up of employees from the Law and Corporate Affairs, Finance, Human Resources, Corporate Marketing, and Advanced Strategy and Policy groups at Microsoft. Other
Executive Officers include the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the various product divisions, leaders of the marketing section, and the
CTO , among others.
66
