Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington.[2] Microsoft's best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, and the Edge web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue;[3] and it was the world's largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, and Meta (parent company of Facebook).
Company type
April 4, 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Worldwide
- Satya Nadella
(Chairman & CEO) - Brad Smith
(Vice Chairman & President) - Bill Gates
(technical adviser)
US$211.9 billion (2023)
US$88.5 billion (2023)
US$73.4 billion (2023)
US$411.9 billion (2023)
US$206.2 billion (2023)
221,000 (2023)
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) 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 from the operating system market and has made several corporate acquisitions, the largest being the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in October 2023,[4] followed by its acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016,[5] and its acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.[6]
As of 2015, Microsoft is market-dominant 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.[7] 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 (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure), and software development (Visual Studio).
Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy.[8] This unfolded with Microsoft acquiring Danger Inc. in 2008,[9] entering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of tablet computers, and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and instead focused on cloud computing, a move that helped the company's shares reach their highest value since December 1999.[10][11] Under Nadella's direction, the company has also heavily expanded its gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022, dedicated to operating Xbox in addition to its three subsidiaries (publishers). Microsoft Gaming is the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue as of 2024.[12]
In 2018, Microsoft became the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, a position it has repeatedly traded with Apple in the years since.[13] In April 2019, Microsoft reached a trillion-dollar market cap, becoming the third U.S. public company to be valued at over $1 trillion after Apple and Amazon, respectively. As of 2024, Microsoft has the third-highest global brand valuation.
Microsoft has been criticized for its monopolistic practices and the company's software has been criticized for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security.
Corporate identity
Corporate culture
Technical references for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as Microsoft Systems Journal (MSJ) are available through the Microsoft Developer Network (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.[225][226] In April 2004, Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, titled Channel 9, that provides a wiki and an Internet forum.[227] Another community site that provides daily videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006.[228] 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 (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits.[229]
Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression "eating your own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using pre-release and beta versions of products inside Microsoft to test them in "real-world" situations.[230] This is usually shortened to just "dog food" and is used as a noun, verb, and adjective. Another bit of jargon, FYIFV or FYIV ("Fuck You, I'm [Fully] Vested"), is used by an employee to indicate they are financially independent and can avoid work anytime they wish.[231]
Microsoft is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H-1B visas, which allows companies in the U.S. to employ certain foreign workers. Bill Gates claims the cap on H1B visas makes it difficult to hire employees for the company, stating "I'd certainly get rid of the H1B cap" in 2005.[232] Critics of H1B visas argue that relaxing the limits would result in increased unemployment for U.S. citizens due to H1B workers working for lower salaries.[233]
The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a report of how progressive the organization deems company policies towards LGBT employees, rated Microsoft as 87% from 2002 to 2004 and as 100% from 2005 to 2010 after they allowed gender expression.[234]
In August 2018, Microsoft implemented a policy for all companies providing subcontractors to require 12 weeks of paid parental leave to each employee. This expands on the former requirement from 2015 requiring 15 days of paid vacation and sick leave each year.[235] In 2015, Microsoft established its own parental leave policy to allow 12 weeks off for parental leave with an additional 8 weeks for the parent who gave birth.[236]
Environment
In 2011, Greenpeace released a report rating the top ten big brands in cloud computing on their sources of electricity for their data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase. Phil Radford of Greenpeace said, "We are concerned that this new explosion in electricity use could lock us into old, polluting energy sources instead of the clean energy available today,"[237] and called on "Amazon, Microsoft and other leaders of the information-technology industry must embrace clean energy to power their cloud-based data centers."[238] In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers.[239]
Microsoft is ranked on the 17th place in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics (16th Edition) that ranks 18 electronics manufacturers according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling, and climate change.[240] Microsoft's timeline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products was 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear. As of January 2011, it has no products that are completely free from PVC and BFRs.[241]
Microsoft's main U.S. campus received a silver certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program in 2008, and it installed over 2,000 solar panels on top of its buildings at its Silicon Valley campus, generating approximately 15 percent of the total energy needed by the facilities in April 2005.[242] Microsoft makes use of alternative forms of transit. It created one of the world's largest private bus systems, the "Connector," to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the "Shuttle Connect" uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel. The "Connector" does not compete with the public bus system and works with it to provide a cohesive transportation network not just for its employees but also for the public.[243]
Microsoft also subsidizes regional public transport, provided by Sound Transit and King County Metro, as an incentive.[242][244] In February 2010, however, Microsoft took a stance against adding additional public transport and high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to the State Route 520 and its floating bridge connecting Redmond to Seattle; the company did not want to delay the construction any further.[245] Microsoft was ranked number 1 in the list of the World's Best Multinational Workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute in 2011.[246]
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.[247][248][249] On October 9, 2020, Microsoft permanently allowed remote work.[250] In January 2021, the company announced on Twitter to join the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which engages the cloud infrastructure and data centers industries to reach carbon neutrality in Europe by 2030, and also disclosed an investment in Climeworks, a direct air capture company partnered with Carbfix for carbon sequestration.[list 1] In the same year, it was awarded the EPA's Green Power Leadership Award, citing the company's use of 100 percent renewable energy since 2014.[256]
In September 2023, Microsoft announced that it purchased $200 million in carbon credits to offset 315,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide over 10 years from Heirloom Carbon, a carbon removal company that mixes calcium oxide from heated crushed limestone with water to form carbon hydroxide to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to mineralize back into limestone while the released carbon dioxide is stored underground or injected into concrete.[257][258]
