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About Microsoft
About Microsoft: Microsoft
Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international
computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of
close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85
countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses,
and supports a wide range of software products for computing
devices.Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, its most popular products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, each of which has achieved near ubiquity in the desktop computer market. Microsoft possesses footholds in other markets, with assets such as the MSNBC cable television network, the MSN Internet portal, and the Microsoft Encarta multimedia encyclopedia. The company also markets home entertainment products, such as the Xbox, Xbox 360 and MSN TV
Microsoft's name, originally bicapitalized MicroSoft, is a blend of "microcomputer software", and is often abbreviated as MS. The company was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico on April 4, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.
After the market saw a flood
of IBM PC clones in the mid-1980s, Microsoft used its new
position, which it gained in part due to a contract from IBM, to
dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS.
The company later released an initial public offering (IPO) in
the stock market, which netted several of its employees millions
of dollars due to the ensuing rise of the stock price. The price
of the stock continued its rise steadily into the early 2000s.
In Microsoft Windows, the
company was selling what would become the most widely used
operating system in the world, which was originally an add-on
for MS-DOS; Microsoft continued to push into multiple markets,
such as computer hardware and television. In addition, Microsoft
has historically given customer support over Usenet newsgroups
and the World Wide Web, and awards Microsoft MVP status to
volunteers who are deemed helpful in assisting the company's
customers.
With what is generally
described as a developer-centric business culture, Microsoft has
become widely known for some of its internal codes of conduct
for its employees. One example is the "eat your own dogfood"
mantra, which describes the practice of using pre-release
products inside the company to test them in an environment
geared towards the real world.
Microsoft has also become
widely panned for its business practices? the U.S. Justice
Department, among others, has sued Microsoft for antitrust
violations and software bundling. In addition, Microsoft has
been criticized for the insecurity of its software. Despite
this, Microsoft has won several awards, such as the "1993 Most
Innovative Company Operating in the U.S." by Fortune Magazine.
The company is on the Fortune 500 list of companies as of 2005.
In the mid-90s, Microsoft
began to expand its product line into computer networking and
the World Wide Web. On August 24, 1995, it launched a major
online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor
to AOL.
MSN became an umbrella service
for Microsoft's online services, using Microsoft Passport as a
universal login system for all of its websites. The company
continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with
a joint venture with NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news
station, MSNBC. The station was launched on July 16 to compete
with similar news outlets such as CNN. In the same year
Microsoft also launched Slate,
an online magazine edited by Michael Kinsley, which offered
political and social commentary along with the cartoon
Doonesbury. In an attempt to extend its reach in the consumer
market, the Company acquired WebTV, which enabled consumers to
access the Internet from their televisions. Microsoft entered
the palm computing market in November with Windows CE 1.0, a new
built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system,
specifically designed to run on low-memory, low-performance
machines, such as handhelds and other palm-sized computers.
1996 saw the release of
Windows NT 4.0, which brought the Windows 95 GUI and Windows NT
kernel together.While Microsoft largely failed to participate in
the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, some of the key
technologies in which the company had invested to enter the
Internet market started to pay off by the mid-90s.
One of the most prominent of
these was ActiveX, an application programming interface built on
the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM); this enabled
Microsoft and others to embed controls in many programming
languages, including the company's own scripting languages, such
as JScript and VBScript. ActiveX included frameworks for
documents and server solutions. The company also released the
Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, which had built-in support for
internet applications.
Later in 1997, Microsoft
Office 97 as well as Internet Explorer 4.0 were released,
marking the beginning of the takeover of the browser market from
rival Netscape, and by agreement with Apple Computer, Internet
Explorer was bundled with the Apple Macintosh operating system
as well as Windows. Windows CE 2.0, the handheld version of
Windows, was released this year, which included a host of bug
fixes and new features designed to make it more appealing to
corporate customers.
In October, the Justice
Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court in which
they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in
1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet
Explorer with Windows.
1998 was another big year for
Microsoft with several big events taking place, not the least of
which was Steve Ballmer being appointed president of Microsoft,
with Bill Gates remaining as Chair and CEO. The company released
an update to the consumer version of Windows, Windows 98.
Windows 98 came with Internet Explorer 4.0 SP1 (which had
Windows Desktop Update bundled), and included new features from
Windows 95 OSR 2.x including the FAT32 file system, and new
features specifically for Windows 98, such as support for
multiple displays.
Microsoft launched its Indian
headquarters as well, which would eventually become the
company's second largest after its U.S. headquarters. Finally, a
great deal of controversy took place when a set of internal
memos from the company were leaked on the internet. These
documents, colloquially referred to as "The Halloween
Documents", were widely reported by the media and go into detail
of the threats that open source software poses to Microsoft's
own software, previously voiced mainly by analysts and advocates
of open source software. The documents also alluding to legal
and other actions against Linux as well as other open source
software.
While Microsoft acknowledges
the documents, it claims that they are merely engineering
studies. Despite this, however, some still believe these
documents represent some of the real strategies of the company
Microsoft released Windows XP
in 2001, a version that aimed to encompass the features of both
its business and home product lines. The release included an
updated version of the Windows 2000 kernel, enhanced DOS
emulation capabilities, and many of the home-user features found
in previous consumer versions.
XP introduced a new graphical
user interface, the first such change since Windows 98. The
operating system was the first to require Microsoft Product
Activation, an anti-piracy mechanism that requires users to
activate the software with Microsoft within 30 days.
Later,
Microsoft would enter the multi-billion-dollar game console
market dominated by Sony and Nintendo, with the release of the
Xbox. As of 2005, the console ranks second to Sony's PlayStation
2 and ahead of Nintendo's GameCube in market share in the United
States (although behind the two worldwide). The console shipped
22 million units compared with competitor PlayStation 2 at +100
million units, and the company took a 4 billion dollar loss due
to the console.
In 2004, the company released
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, a version of Windows XP
specifically designed for multimedia capabilities, and Windows
XP Starter Edition, a version of Windows XP with a smaller
feature set designed for entry-level consumers.
However, Microsoft would
encounter more turmoil in March 2004 when legal action would be
brought against it by the European Union. Eventually Microsoft
was fined $613 million, ordered to divulge certain protocols to
competitors, and to produce a version of Windows that did not
include the Windows Media Player.
Many
Korean retailers now offer two separate packages, one with
Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer and one without
either software but with links to obtain third-party software
Microsoft announced a new version of its MSN search service
later in 2005, designed to compete with Google.
Microsoft is scheduled to
release a new version of its Windows operating system, Windows
Vista (formerly known as 'Longhorn') in the second half of 2006,
although it has been recently announced that the operating
system may not reach consumers until January of 2007. The next
version of their server operating system, codenamed Windows
Server "Longhorn" is currently scheduled for release in 2007.
The next version of
Microsoft's productivity suite, Microsoft Office 2007 (formerly
known as 'Office 12'), is currently set to be released towards
the end of 2006. In addition to Office, the next version of
Visual Studio, the company's development suite, code named
Orcas, is currently available as a Community Technology Preview.
An official release date is yet to be set for the development
suite, however. |
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