Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones using the Windows Phone OS. As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft had struggled to keep up with its rivals in providing a modern smartphone operating system, falling behind Apple and Google-sponsored Android in the United States. Relatively strong sales of both products helped to produce a record profit in 2007. Microsoft Office 2007, released at the same time, featured a “Ribbon” user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors.
Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the company’s software. Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide). It is estimated to encompass over 8 million ft2 (750,000 m2) of office space and 30,000–40,000 employees. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, weeks before the company went public on March 13. 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.
- Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance.
- In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers.
- In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft.
- In the same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software.
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- Its total market value was over $410B—with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000.
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- On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies’ progress against OKRs.
- In April 2016, the company sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company’s and customers’ rights.
On August 20, 20 Microsoft employees and their allies were arrested after refusing to disperse from a protest on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus. After the disruptions at these events, Microsoft contacted the FBI in search of assistance in surveilling its pro-Palestinian employees and their allies. In May 2025, Microsoft issued an unsigned statement confirming that these services had been made available to Israel, while denying that these tools were employed during the massacre of the people of Gaza. The company has a history of antitrust battles in the U.S. and Europe, with over €2 billion in EU fines previously imposed for similar abuses.
The Microsoft Office app is now Microsoft 365 Copilot
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As a result, the company will record an impairment and restructuring charge of approximately $950 million, of which approximately $200 million will relate to severance payments. In May 2016, Microsoft announced another 1,850 job cuts mostly in its Nokia mobile phone division. In July 2015, Microsoft announced another 7,800 job cuts in the next several months. In October 2014, Microsoft revealed that it was almost done with eliminating 18,000 employees, which was its largest-ever layoff sweep.
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In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company’s mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market since the 1990s. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and other fields. According to the complaint and media reports, Microsoft’s cloud services may have been used to store or process surveillance-related data.
Microsoft’s Teams usage soared during the pandemic, growing from 2 million daily users in 2017 to 300 million in 2023. 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. 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. As reported by several news outlets, an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft based in the Republic of Ireland declared £220 bn in profits but paid no corporation tax for the year 2020. This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health.
In March the company also established guidelines that censor users of Office 365 from using profanity in private documents. On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems. In May 2016, the company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of “holiday stores” across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of “bricks-and-mortar” Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012.
With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987.
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. The DoJ had “changed data request rules on alerting the Internet users about agencies accessing their information.” In April 2016, the company sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company’s and customers’ rights. In July 2025, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs, cutting approximately 9,000 employees in its largest workforce reduction in over two years. In November 2018, the company won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring augmented reality (AR) headset technology into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers. On November 14, 2014, Microsoft overtook ExxonMobil to become the second most-valuable company by market capitalization, behind only Apple Inc.
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The company’s retail locations are part of a greater strategy to help build a connection with its consumers. As per company executives, Microsoft had been on the lookout for a flagship location since 2009. On October 26, 2015, the company opened its retail location on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It was announced that the division would be led by Jordan Hoffman, who previously worked for Deepmind and Inflection. In April 2024, it was announced that Microsoft would be opening a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence ‘hub’ around Paddington in London, England.
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It has also been criticized for the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as “temporary”, and therefore without medical benefits), the use of forced retention tactics, which means that employees would be sued if they tried to leave. Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Among grant recipients from the Asia-Pacific region are the Sri Lankan IT company Fortude, the Thailand-based Vulcan Coalition, and the Indonesian organization Kerjabilitas. In June 2022, Microsoft published the report on Russian cyber attacks and concluded that state-backed Russian hackers “have engaged in “strategic espionage” against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups” in 42 countries supporting Kyiv.
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The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems. In the same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. 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 Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Azure Services Platform, the company’s entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the video game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.citation needed
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. In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase.
Design an image of a drawing of a database in colored pencil. Create images, posters, banners, videos, surveys and more with easy-to-use templates. The organization requested that European data protection authorities investigate whether this data processing complies with EU law. Concerns were raised about Microsoft’s licensing practices potentially locking customers into its services and its AI investments possibly sidestepping regulatory oversight. 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. 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.
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Microsoft is ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. On July 2, 2025, Microsoft announced it would cut nearly 4% of its workforce, around 9,000 jobs, to control costs amid heavy AI infrastructure spending, while also restructuring management and streamlining operations. 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. On February 28, 2025, Microsoft announced that Skype would be shutting down on May 5, 2025, to streamline its focus on Microsoft Teams. While experts regarded these changes as improvements, they advised caution, with some recommending further testing before users opted in.
A developer preview was released on September 13, which was subsequently replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and released to the public in May. Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation’s logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped its aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS that was released in October that year.
On November 10, vegas casino apk 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles. On February 20, 2019, Microsoft said it would offer its cyber security service AccountGuard to 12 new markets in Europe, including Germany, France and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers in the political space from hacking. 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. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy.
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In July 2024, it was reported that the company was laying off its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team. On November 20, 2023, Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman, who had been ousted as CEO of OpenAI just days earlier, and Greg Brockman, who had resigned as president, would join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. In June 2023, Microsoft released Azure Quantum Elements to run molecular simulations and calculations in computational chemistry and materials science using a combination of AI, high-performance computing and quantum computing.
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