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. 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. Internal Revenue Service was alleging that the company owed the U.S. $28.9 billion in past taxes, plus penalties related to mis-allocation of corporate profits over a decade. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, announced that it had donated an initial batch of supplies, including 15,000 protection goggles, infrared thermometers, medical caps, and protective suits, to healthcare workers in Seattle, with further aid to come.
In February 2018, Microsoft ceased 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 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 from using profanity in private documents.
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While Microsoft acknowledged the documents, it claimed that they are merely engineering studies. Despite this, some believe that these studies were used in the real strategies of the company. IBM first approached Gates and Allen about Microsoft’s upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) in July 1980, shortly after Gates’s mother began working on United Way’s executive board with IBM CEO John Opel. 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 IBM PC. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for less than US$100,000, which IBM renamed to IBM PC DOS. Due to potential copyright infringement problems with CP/M, IBM marketed both CP/M and PC DOS for US$240 and US$40, respectively, with PC DOS eventually becoming the standard because of its lower price.
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- “Embrace, extend, and extinguish” (EEE), also known as “embrace, extend, and exterminate,” is a phrase that the U.S.
- Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies,a and one of the most valuable brands globally.
- In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC, which it had run as a joint venture with NBC since 1996.
- In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program’s 20th anniversary.
The company restructured on June 25, 1981, to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington (with a further change of its name to “Microsoft Corporation, Inc.”). As part of the restructuring, Bill Gates became president of the company and chairman of the board, and Paul Allen became executive vice president and vice chairman. In 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, though he remained on the board as vice-chairman. This effectively ended the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity.
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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. In 2009, the opening show of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was hosted by Steve Ballmer for the first time. During the show, Ballmer announced the first public Beta Test of Windows 7 for partners and developers on January 8, but also for the general public two days later. On June 26, 2009, Microsoft started taking pre-orders at a discounted price for Windows 7 which was launched on October 22, 2009. Windows 7 has several editions, which acknowledge the rise of netbook computers with reduced processing power. Formerly codenamed “Longhorn” in the early development stages, Windows Vista was released to consumers on January 30, 2007.
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Microsoft Works, an integrated office program which combined features typically found in a word processor, spreadsheet, database and other office applications, saw its first release as an application for the Apple Macintosh towards the end of 1986. Microsoft Works would later be sold with other Microsoft products including Microsoft Word and Microsoft Bookshelf, a reference collection introduced in 1987 that was the company’s first CD-ROM product. On August 8, 1989, Microsoft introduced its most successful office product, Microsoft Office.
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Is widely recognized as the most influential company in the microcomputer-software industry. Claiming more than a million installed MS-DOS machines, founder and chairman Bill Gates has decided to certify Microsoft’s jump on the rest of the industry by dominating applications, operating systems, peripherals and, most recently, book publishing. Microsoft also marketed through an Apple dealer in West Palm Beach, Florida two products for the Radio-Shack TRS-80. The other was authored by a professor at the University of Hawaii called “MuMATH” and had the ability to do mathematics in long integer math to avoid floating point numbers. Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and would later succeed Bill Gates as CEO from January 2000 until February 2014.
On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community despite holding more than 60,000 patents. 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. December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge Legacy browser project in favor of the “New Edge” browser project, featuring a Chromium based backend. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program’s 20th anniversary.
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The memo described Netscape with their Netscape Navigator as a “new competitor ‘born’ on the Internet”. The memo outlines Microsoft’s failure to grasp the Internet’s importance, and in it Gates assigned “the Internet the highest level of importance” from then on. Microsoft began to expand chicken road app its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web.
On July 19, 2024, a global IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting businesses, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide. The outage was traced back to a flawed update of CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software, which resulted in Microsoft systems crashing and causing disruptions across various sectors. Despite CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz clarifying that the issue was not a cyberattack, the incident had widespread consequences, leading to delays in air travel, financial transactions, and medical services globally. Microsoft stated that the underlying cause had been fixed but acknowledged ongoing residual impacts on some Microsoft 365 apps and services. In June 2024, Microsoft announced that it was building a “hyperscale data centre” in South East Leeds. In July 2024, it was reported that the company was laying off its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team.
On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington, since it was hard to recruit top programmers to Albuquerque. Shortly before the move, 11 of the then-13 employees posed for the staff photo on the right. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI. This inquiry is part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to curb the power of major tech companies, especially under FTC chair Lina Khan.
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- On October 15, 2018, Paul Allen died after complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
- 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.
- In July 2015, Microsoft announced another 7,800 job cuts in the next several months.
- 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 IBM PC.
- That year the company also launched the Surface “digital table”, later renamed PixelSense.
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, 2012, Microsoft announced its intention to launch a news operation, part of a new-look MSN, with Windows 8 later in the month. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off some 10,000 employees. The announcement came a day after hosting a Sting concert for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos, Switzerland. Microsoft also announced a new multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment deal with OpenAI.
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Board members are elected every year at the annual shareholders’ meeting using a majority vote system. On May 30, 2025, it was reported that Microsoft’s Russian division would be preparing to file for bankruptcy, days after President Vladimir Putin stated that foreign services providers should be throttled in Russia to make way for domestic software, which included Microsoft. The company previously restructured operations in Russia in June 2022 after being significantly impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but stated those restructuring efforts have failed.
The statement also marked the beginning of three-part program to enhance Microsoft’s encryption and transparency efforts. Microsoft employed 127,104 people as of June 5, 2014, making this about a 14 percent reduction of its workforce as the biggest Microsoft layoff ever. Previously, Microsoft had eliminated 5,800 jobs in 2009 in line with the Great Recession 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.
In January 2020, the company announced a strategy to take the company carbon negative by 2030 and to remove all carbon that it has emitted since its foundation in 1975. 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.
