Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in
Redmond, Washington. Microsoft's best-known software products are the Windows line of operating
systems, the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, and the Edge web browser. Its flagship
hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of
touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the
largest United States corporations by total revenue;[2] it was the world's largest software maker by
revenue as of 2022. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies,
alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, and Meta Platforms.
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC
interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market
with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering
(IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000
millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the
operating system market and has made several corporate acquisitions, the largest being the
acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016,[3] followed by its acquisition of Skype
Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.[4]
As of 2015, Microsoft is market-dominant in the IBM PC compatible operating system market and the
office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market
to Android.[5] The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software
for desktops, laptops, tabs, gadgets, and servers, including Internet search (with Bing), the digital
services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure), and software
development (Visual Studio).
Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy.
[6] This unfolded with Microsoft acquiring Danger Inc. in 2008,[7] entering the personal computer
production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of
tablet computers, and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and
services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on
hardware and instead focused on cloud computing, a move that helped the company's shares reach
their highest value since December 1999.[8][9]
Items in a classroom:
Bags
o Laptops
Stationaries
Books
