Microsoft – The Biggest Computer Software Seller in the World
The biggest computer software seller in the world, microsoft has an enormous amount of products and services to offer its users. It is best known for its Windows operating system and Office productivity suite, but it also produces hardware and offers a variety of cloud platforms. The company was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were college classmates at Harvard University. They had been working on a programming language compiler for the Altair 8800 home computer when they decided to form their own company, which they named after the city of Microsoft, Washington.
Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with additional offices around the world. It is a publicly traded company with the ticker symbol MSFT. Its software, hardware and cloud-based services are used by millions of people worldwide to run businesses and personal computers and devices.
It has had a profound cultural impact in its more than four decades of existence, revolutionizing the way that people work and play. Its market dominance in IBM PC compatible operating systems and office software has helped make computers more accessible and useful to the masses. Its Xbox line of gaming consoles has contributed to the evolution of video games as a form of entertainment, and its Bing search engine is a competitor to Google’s. It is also making efforts to improve access to technology and computer science education, including through its Microsoft Academy program.
Despite its massive popularity, there has been criticism of various aspects of microsoft’s business practices. These include the use of permatemp employees, who work for years as temporary workers without medical benefits and whose jobs are at risk if they quit, and the practice of overworking employees to the point where their health is at risk. In addition, the company has been accused of using anticompetitive tactics and abusing its monopolistic power by entering product categories involving widely-used standards and then extending them with proprietary capabilities, which disadvantages competitors, in a process called vendor lock-in.
As the company moves towards a future based on cloud computing, it has been investing in artificial intelligence. Its CEO, Satya Nadella, has encouraged the company to think more like a startup and has made strategic changes to drive innovation within the organization. In the past, the company has struggled to find a balance between its need to secure its position in the market and its desire to push forward with new technologies.
In addition to its work in artificial intelligence, microsoft is taking action on climate change. It has committed to becoming carbon negative by 2030, meaning it will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. It has also made commitments to increase diversity in its workforce and promote women and minorities in the tech industry. This is a great step in the right direction and shows that Microsoft is serious about its commitment to a more diverse world. In a sign of progress, it recently hired two female cybersecurity experts as senior directors in its cloud division.
