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Microsoft Corporation () is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems.

Microsoft would as well come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox and its successor, the Xbox 360 as so then as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS. The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering made an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. In May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications for $8.5 billion dollars.

Primarily in the 1990s, critics contend Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws. Known for its interviewing process with obscure questions, various studies and ratings were as a rule favorable to Microsoft's diversity within the company as then as its overall environmental impact with the exception of the electronics portion of the business.

Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion in computer programming, were seeking to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's Altair 8800 microcomputer. Allen noticed that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device; afterwards a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didn't to tell the truth have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair during Gates developed the interpreter. Even though they developed the interpreter on a simulator and not the actual device, the interpreter worked flawlessly when they demonstrated the interpreter to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 1975; MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC. They officially established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft," as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, "ASCII Microsoft". The company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979.

The OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix

Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix. Nevertheless, it was DOS that solidified the company's dominance. Afterwards negotiations with Digital Technology failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC-DOS. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, however no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Due to various factors, just as MS-DOS's available software selection , Microsoft in the end became the leading PC OS vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as then as a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in February afterwards developing Hodgkin's disease.

1984-1994: Windows and OfficeWhile jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20. Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond on February 26, 1986, and on March 13 the company went public; the ensuing rise in the stock would make an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Due to the partnership with IBM, in 1990 the Federal Trade Commission set its eye on Microsoft for possible collusion; it marked the beginning of over a decade of legal clashes with the U.S. Government. Microsoft announced the release of its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers on April 2, 1987; in the meantime, the company was at work on a 32-bit OS, Microsoft Windows NT, using ideas from OS/2; it shipped on July 21, 1993 with a new modular kernel and the Win32 application programming interface, making porting from 16-bit Windows easier. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.

Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office, in 1990. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, just as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. On May 22 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 with a streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor. Both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas. Novell, a Word competitor from 1984-1986, filed a lawsuit years later claiming that Microsoft left part of its APIs undocumented in order to gain a competitive advantage.

1995-2005: Internet and the 32-bit era1993 took over from the Federal Trade Commission, a protracted legal wrangling between Microsoft and the department ensued, resulting in various settlements and possible blocked mergers. Microsoft would point to companies just as AOL-Time Warner in its defense.]]

Following Bill Gates's 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. 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, and for OEMs Internet Explorer, a web browser. Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes because the boxes were printed earlier the team finished the web browser, and instead was included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and NBC Universal created a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC. Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, just 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.

The CEO position on January 13

Bill Gates handed over the CEO position on January 13, 2000 to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, 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 through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decry the alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, a form of digital rights management; for instance the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner, however also secured against its owner as then. On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft, calling the company an "abusive monopoly"; it settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004. On October 25, 2001 Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines pursuant to this agreement the NT codebase. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the 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 €497million and to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player, Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N.

Released in January 2007, the at once version of Windows, Windows Vista, focused on features, security, and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero. Microsoft Office 2007, released together, featured a "Ribbon" user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both titles helped to produce a record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed another fine of €899million 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".

Bill Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008 during retaining other positions related to the company just in case to being an advisor for the company on key projects. Azure Services Platform, the company's entry into the cloud computing 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 opened in Scottsdale, Arizona; the same day the first store opened Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease of use features and performance enhancements, or rather than a large reworking of Windows.

Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Other founding companies include Google, HP Networking, Yahoo, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. The nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a new cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to speed technology through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers and other networking areas.

The 2010 fiscal year

Product divisionsFor the 2010 fiscal year, Microsoft had five product divisions: Windows & Windows Live Division, Server and Tools, Online Services Division, Microsoft Business Division, and Entertainment and Devices Division.

Windows & Windows Live Division, Server and Tools, Online Services DivisionThe company's Client division produces the flagship Windows OS line just as Windows 7; it as well produces the Windows Live family of products and services. Server and Tools produces the server versions of Windows, just as Windows Server 2008 R2 as then as a set of development tools called Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Silverlight, a web application framework, and Systems Management Server, a collection of tools providing remote-control abilities, patch management, software distribution and a hardware/software inventory. Other server products include: Microsoft SQL Server, a relational database management system, Microsoft Exchange Server, for certain business-oriented e-mail and scheduling features, Small Business Server, for messaging and other small business-oriented features; and Microsoft BizTalk Server, for business process management.

The Microsoft Business Division produces Microsoft Office including Microsoft Office 2010, the company's line of office software. The software product includes Word, Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Publisher. A number of other products were added later with the release of Office 2003 including Visio, Project, MapPoint, InfoPath and OneNote. The division as well develops enterprise resource planning software for companies in accordance with the Microsoft Dynamics brand. These include: Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Microsoft Dynamics SL. They are targeted at varying company types and countries, and limited to organizations with pursuant to this agreement 7,500 employees. As well included pursuant to this agreement the Dynamics brand is the customer relationship management software Microsoft Dynamics CRM, part of the Azure Services Platform.

Entertainment and Devices DivisionThe Entertainment and Devices Division produces the Windows CE OS for embedded systems and Windows Phone 7 for smartphones. Microsoft at first entered the mobile market through Windows CE for handheld devices, in the long run developing into the Windows Mobile OS and now, Windows Phone 7. Windows CE is designed for devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, appliances and cars. The division as well produces computer games that run on Windows PCs and other systems including titles just as Age of Empires, Halo and the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, and houses the Macintosh Business Unit which produces Mac OS software including Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division designs, markets, and manufactures consumer electronics including the Xbox 360 game console, the handheld Zune media player, and the television-based Internet appliance MSN TV. Microsoft as well markets personal computer hardware including mice, keyboards, and various game controllers just as joysticks and gamepads.

CultureTechnical reference for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines just as Microsoft Systems Journal are available through the Microsoft Developer Network. MSDN as well offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions for the most part offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software. In April 2004 Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, titled Channel9, that provides a wiki and an Internet forum. Another community site that provides daily 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 status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits.

One of Microsoft's business tactics, described by an executive as "embrace, extend and extinguish," at first embraces a competing standard or product, at the time extends it to produce their own version which is straightway incompatible with the standard, which in the course of time extinguishes competition that does not or cannot use Microsoft's new version. Various companies and governments sue Microsoft over this set of tactics, resulting in billions of dollars in rulings against the company. Microsoft claims that the original strategy is not anti-competitive, however rather an exercise of its discretion to implement features it believes clients want.

The first time in 20 years Apple Inc

For the first time in 20 years Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in Q1 2011 quarterly profits and earnings due to a slowdown in PC sales and continuing huge losses in Microsoft's Online Services Division. Microsoft profits were $5.2 billion, during Apple Inc. profits were $6 billion, on earnings of $14.5 billion and $24.7 billion respectively.

MarketingIn 2004, Microsoft commissioned technology firms to do independent studies comparing the total cost of ownership of Windows Server 2003 to Linux; the firms concluded that companies found Windows easier to administrate than Linux, in this way those using Windows would administrate faster resulting in lower costs for their company. This spurred a wave of related studies; a study by the Yankee Group concluded that upgrading from one version of Windows Server to another costs a fraction of the switching costs from Windows Server to Linux, even though 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 OSDL, 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.

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