Microsoft Corporation is a public A public company or publicly traded company is a company that has permission to offer its registered securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or occasionally a company whose stock is traded over the counter (OTC) via market makers who use non-exchange quotation services multinational corporation A multinational corporation or transnational corporation (TNC), also called multinational enterprise (MNE), is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred as an international corporation. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has defined[citation needed] an MNC headquartered in Redmond Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 45,256 at the 2000 census, with an estimated population of 48,739 in 2006. Redmond is best known as the home of Microsoft and Nintendo of America. With an annual bike race on city streets and the state's only velodrome, Redmond is also known as "the bicycle, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing Computing, also known as computer science, is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer technology, computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology. Computer science is the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The original BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA to provide computer access to non-science students. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was interpreters In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language. An interpreter may be a program that either for the Altair 8800 The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold thousands in the first, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer Home computers were a class of personal computers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as accessible personal computers, more capable than video game consoles. These computers typically cost much less than business, scientific or engineering-oriented desktop personal operating system An operating system is the software on a computer that manages the way different programs use its hardware, and regulates the ways that a user controls the computer. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer with multiple programs—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers. Some (OS) market with MS-DOS MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal line of OSs. The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering An initial public offering referred to simply as an "offering" or "flotation," is when a company (called the issuer) issues common stock or shares to the public for the first time. They are often issued by smaller, younger companies seeking capital to expand, but can also be done by large privately-owned companies looking to (IPO) made an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft would come to dominate other markets as well, notably the office suite In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a collection of programs intended to be used by knowledge workers. The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways that the operating system would not market with Microsoft Office Microsoft Office is an office suite of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Microsoft Office was introduced by Microsoft in 1989 for Macintosh, with a version for Windows in 1990. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of Office.
Primarily in the 1990s, critics contend the company used monopolistic In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos / μονος + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. (This is in contrast to a monopsony which relates to a business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal Refusal to deal is one of several anti-competitive practices forbidden in countries which have restricted market economies. For example, in Australia: and tying Tying is the practice of making the sale of one good to the de facto or de jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). It is often illegal when the products are not naturally related, for example requiring a bookstore to stock up on an unpopular title before allowing them to purchase a bestseller. Tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries and European Commission The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union found the company in violation of antitrust Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, are laws that promote or maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct laws. Known for its interviewing process with obscure questions, various studies and ratings were generally favorable to Microsoft's diversity within the company as well as its overall environmental impact with the exception of the electronics portion of the business.
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History
Main articles: History of Microsoft Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation. The history of Microsoft began on April 4, 1975, when it was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque. Its current best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software and History of Microsoft Windows In 1983 Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface for its own operating system (MS-DOS), which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. The product line has changed from a GUI product to a modern operating system over two families of design, each with their own codebase and default file system Paul Allen and Bill Gates (respectively) on October 19, 1981 in a sea of PCs after signing a pivotal contract. IBM called Microsoft in July 1980 inquiring about programming languages A programming language is an artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine, to express algorithms precisely, or as a mode of human communication for its upcoming PC line;[1] after failed negotiations with another company, IBM gave Microsoft a contract to develop the OS for the new line of PCs.[2]Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and is one of the wealthiest people in the world and Bill Gates William Henry "Bill" Gates III, KBE is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. During his career, childhood friends with a passion in computer programming Computer programming is the process of writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language. The code may be a modification of an existing source or something completely new. The purpose of programming is to create a program that exhibits a certain, were seeking to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems was an American electronics company founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico that began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971 and personal computers in 1975. Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims founded MITS in December 1969 to produce miniaturized telemetry modules for model rockets such as a roll rate sensor's (MITS) Altair 8800 The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold thousands in the first microcomputer A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers. Many microcomputers are also personal computers (in the generic sense). Allen noticed that they could program a BASIC In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The original BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA to provide computer access to non-science students. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was interpreter In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language. An interpreter may be a program that either for the device; after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didn't actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator Simulation is used in many contexts, including the modeling of natural systems or human systems in order to gain insight into their functioning. Other contexts include simulation of technology for performance optimization, safety engineering, testing, training and education. Simulation can be used to show the eventual real effects of alternative for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter. Although 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 Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 528,497 as of July 1, 2009, according to U.S. census estimates, and ranks as the 34th-largest city in the U.S. As of June 2007,, New Mexico in March 1975; MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC Altair BASIC was an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product , distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range.[3] They officially established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as the CEO A chief executive officer or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer (executive) or administrator in charge of total management of an organization. An individual appointed as CEO of a corporation, company, organization, or agency reports to the board of directors.[4] In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, "ASCII Microsoft ASCII Corporation was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication".[5] The company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington Bellevue is a rapidly growing city in King County, Washington, United States, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Long known as a suburb or satellite city of Seattle, it is now categorized as an edge city or a boomburb. The population was 109,569 at the 2000 census, but by 2008 had grown to an estimated 123,771 in January 1979.[4]
Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit, called Xenix Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually began distributing it as SCO UNIX (now known as SCO OpenServer).[6] However, it was DOS DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition (Disk Operating System) that solidified the company's dominance. After negotiations with Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. was the company created by Dr. Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related products. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research should not be confused with Digital Equipment Corporation; the two were not affiliated. DR was based in Pacific Grove, failed, IBM International Business Machines , abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation head-quartered in Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States. IBM is the world's largest technology company and the second most valuable by global brand (after Coca-Cola). IBM is one of the few information technology awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS 86-DOS was an operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system from Seattle Computer Products Seattle Computer Products was a Seattle, Washington computer hardware company which was one of the first manufacturers of computer systems based on the Intel 8086 processor. It was staffed partly by high-school students from nearby communities who soldered and assembled the computers. Some of them would later work for Microsoft, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC-DOS IBM PC DOS is a DOS system for the IBM Personal Computer and compatibles, manufactured and sold by IBM from the 1980s to the 2000s. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression or fixation. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive the IBM PC BIOS In IBM PC Compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS, is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface, other companies had to reverse engineer Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, or software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOS's available software selection, Microsoft eventually became the leading PC OS vendor.[2][7] The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.[8] Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in February after developing Hodgkin's disease.[9]
1985–1994: Windows and Office
The sign at a main entrance to the Microsoft corporate campus in Redmond. In May 2005 the campus stretched more than 750,000 m² (approx. 8 million square feet) and contained over 30,000 employees.[10]While jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1985, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20.[11] Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond on February 26, 1986, and on March 13 the company went public;[12] the ensuing rise in the stock would make an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.[13] 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.[14] Microsoft announced the release of its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987;[15] meanwhile, 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 (API), making porting from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows easier. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.[16]
Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office, in 1990. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.[17] On May 22 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 with a streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor.[18] Both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas.[19][20] 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.[21]
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Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:14:13 GMT+00:00
; Pares Financials Wall Street Journal According to the most recent filings, Greenlight more than doubled its holding in Microsoft to 7.7 million shares at the end of June from 3.4 million as of ... Einhorn takes stake in Apple, ups Microsoft , Xerox Reuters Investor Einhorn doubles down on Microsoft , Xerox MarketWatch Investor David Einhorn doubles down on Microsoft MarketWatch
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Should have seen it coming With Bill Gates out of picture nearly anyway at Microsoft the company is set to change the way things are handled For one it is going in for a stricter
Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:41:10 PDT
You can always spot a professional. theinquirer.net.
