What is Microsoft?
Microsoft is a technology company that develops consumer and enterprise software, hardware, services, and cloud computing. It is market-dominant in the IBM PC compatible operating system and office suite markets, and is also active in mobile devices (with the Xbox gaming console system and Windows Phone), cloud computing (with Azure), Internet search (with Bing), digital media, virtual reality (with HoloLens), and software development (with Visual Studio).
Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, Microsoft was one of the first companies to create a computer program that could read machine language and produce text output. This early work gave birth to the Microsoft Word processor, which was later developed into an entire suite of office programs. Other programs include the Excel spreadsheet program, the PowerPoint slide presentation maker, and the Outlook email system.
The company is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States. Its products are used by millions of people worldwide and have become synonymous with personal computer ownership. Microsoft is considered one of the Fortune 500 and is ranked as the fifth largest public corporation by market capitalization. Its most valuable assets are its intellectual property and brand, which is widely recognized and respected around the world.
In recent years, the company has been criticized for its inability to innovate. Critics argue that it has a “monopoly mentality” and that the company relies on its reputation to attract customers and avoid new competitors. In addition, the company’s business practices have been criticized for being unethical and unfair to employees.
Despite these setbacks, the company continues to be a dominant force in the tech industry. Microsoft remains an industry leader in the fields of cloud computing, smartphones, and gaming, with a number of popular consumer and enterprise applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Skype. The company’s Surface tablet computers are a competitor to Apple’s iPad and Google’s Nexus tablets.
Satya Nadella became CEO of the company in 2014. He restructured the company to make it act more like a startup and less like a lumbering, protective giant. For example, he eliminated hierarchies and freed engineers from many institutional controls, such as rules that prevented them from contacting people across levels to get answers to questions. These changes allowed the engineers to quickly respond to sudden opportunities and threats.
Other products include the Xbox game console system, Windows 10, a touchscreen-based operating system that replaced Windows 8, and Cortana, an intelligent assistant that responds to voice commands. Microsoft also offers a wide variety of services, such as Microsoft Family Safety for parental control of online content and screen time, and Microsoft Flow to automatically synchronize files, send notifications, and update data between apps. The company also provides business tools such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Graph, and SharePoint. In 2016, the company purchased LinkedIn, a professional networking site, for $26.2 billion. The company also owns the digital music service Groove and the video-conferencing app Skype. Microsoft also sponsors a series of hackathons, where it invites its engineers to dream up projects and collaborate quickly.
