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On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and holding company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth $68.7 billion. Activision Blizzard is best known for producing franchises, including but not limited to Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Skylanders, and Overwatch. In 2002, Microsoft launched the .NET initiative, along with new versions of some of its development products, such as Microsoft Visual Studio. The initiative has been an entirely new development API for Windows programming, and included a new programming language, C#. Windows Server 2003 was launched, featuring enhanced administration abilities, such as new user interfaces to server tools. In 2004, the company released Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, a version of Windows XP designed for multimedia abilities, and Windows XP Starter Edition, a version of Windows XP with a smaller feature set designed for entry-level consumers.

Activists urged Microsoft to cut ties with Israeli military during protest at HQ

The new version of Microsoft’s operating system boasted new features such as streamlined graphic user interface GUI and improved protected mode ability for the Intel 386 processor; it sold over 100,000 copies in two weeks. Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows. In an internal memo to Microsoft employees on May 16, 1991, Bill Gates announced that the OS/2 partnership was over, and that Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the Windows NT kernel. Some people, especially developers who had ignored Windows and committed most of their resources to OS/2, were taken by surprise, and accused Microsoft of deception. This changeover from OS/2 was frequently referred to in the industry as “the head-fake”.

• Skeptics questioned the system software vendor’s decision to produce application software.
• As part of its strategy to broaden its business, Microsoft released Microsoft Encarta on March 22, 1993, the first encyclopedia designed to run on a computer.
• The first operating system publicly released by the company was a variant of Unix announced on August 25, 1980.
• The station was launched on July 15, 1996, to compete with similar news outlets such as CNN.
• Activision Blizzard is best known for producing franchises, including but not limited to Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Skylanders, and Overwatch.

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IBM first approached Gates and Allen about Microsoft’s upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) in July 1980, shortly after Gates’s mother began working on United Way’s executive board with IBM CEO John Opel. On August 12, 1981, after negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the IBM PC. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for less than US$100,000, which IBM renamed to IBM PC DOS. Due to potential copyright infringement problems with CP/M, IBM marketed both CP/M and PC DOS for US$240 and US$40, respectively, with PC DOS eventually becoming the standard because of its lower price. Thirty-five of the company’s 100 employees worked on the IBM project for more than a year. When the IBM PC debuted, Microsoft was the only company that offered operating system, programming language, and application software for the new computer.

The memo described Netscape with their Netscape Navigator as a “new competitor ‘born’ on the Internet”. The memo outlines https://pin-up-download.in/ Microsoft’s failure to grasp the Internet’s importance, and in it Gates assigned “the Internet the highest level of importance” from then on. Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web.

In November 2018, Microsoft agreed to supply 100,000 HoloLens headsets to the United States military in order to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy.” In 2009, the opening show of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was hosted by Steve Ballmer for the first time. During the show, Ballmer announced the first public Beta Test of Windows 7 for partners and developers on January 8, but also for the general public two days later. On June 26, 2009, Microsoft started taking pre-orders at a discounted price for Windows 7 which was launched on October 22, 2009.

Hyphenated in its early incarnations, on November 26, 1976, the company was registered under “Microsoft” name with the Secretary of State of New Mexico. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. The company’s first international office was founded on November 1, 1978, in Japan, entitled “ASCII Microsoft” (now called “Microsoft Japan”), and on November 29, 1979, the term, “Microsoft” was first used by Bill Gates. On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington, since it was hard to recruit top programmers to Albuquerque. Shortly before the move, 11 of the then-13 employees posed for the staff photo on the right. As of June 30, 2015, Microsoft has a global annual revenue of US$86.83 billion (~$112 billion in 2024) and 128,076 employees worldwide.

2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox

According to Microsoft, the future of xCloud on iOS remains unclear and potentially out of Microsoft’s hands. Apple has imposed a strict limit on “remote desktop clients” which means applications are only allowed to connect to a user-owned host device or gaming console owned by the user. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire video game company ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, for about $7.5 billion, with the deal expected to occur in the second half of 2021 fiscal year. On March 9, 2021, the acquisition was finalized and ZeniMax Media became part of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios division. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of their first Interactive whiteboard, Microsoft Surface Hub (part of the Surface family).

• Thirty-five of the company’s 100 employees worked on the IBM project for more than a year.
• In guise of competing with other Internet Companies such as the search service Google, in 2005 Microsoft announced a new version of its MSN search service.
• 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.
• On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies’ progress against OKRs.
• Gates said that doing so was not what InfoWorld phrased as a “big-time operation”, but Microsoft spent aggressively, with a reportedly “unlimited” R&D budget despite others in the industry advising against overexpansion.

DreamWorks SKG and Microsoft formed a new company, DreamWorks Interactive (in 2000 acquired by Electronic Arts, which named it EA Los Angeles), to produce interactive and multimedia entertainment properties.

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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 (now called a Microsoft account) as a universal login system for all of its web sites. The company continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with a joint venture with NBC to create a new 24-hour cable news television station, MSNBC. The station was launched on July 15, 1996, to compete with similar news outlets such as CNN.

Windows 7 has several editions, which acknowledge the rise of netbook computers with reduced processing power. Formerly codenamed “Longhorn” in the early development stages, Windows Vista was released to consumers on January 30, 2007. Microsoft also released a new version of its Office suite, called Microsoft Office 2007, alongside Windows Vista.

additional Microsoft employees fired after protesters breached HQ

Skeptics questioned the system software vendor’s decision to produce application software. Gates said that doing so was not what InfoWorld phrased as a “big-time operation”, but Microsoft spent aggressively, with a reportedly “unlimited” R&D budget despite others in the industry advising against overexpansion. Word was first released in the spring of 1983, and free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of PC World, making it one of the first programs to be distributed on-disk with a magazine. (Earlier magazine on-disk distributions included Robert Uiterwyk’s BASIC in the May 1977 issue of Information Age.) However, Xenix was never sold to end users directly although it was licensed to many software OEMs for resale.

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In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. On September 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that it had an exclusive license to use OpenAI’s GPT-3 artificial intelligence language generator. The previous version of GPT-3, called GPT-2, made headlines for being “too dangerous to release” and had numerous capabilities, including designing websites, prescribing medication, answering questions, and penning articles. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles.

In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the UEFI core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. December also saw the company rebuilding Microsoft Edge as a Chromium-based browser; it was publicly released on January 15, 2020. On February 4, 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella, who previously led Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division. On the same day, John W. Thompson took on the role of chairman, with Bill Gates stepping down from the position, while continuing to participate as a technology advisor. On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $7.2 billion (~$9.37 billion in 2024).

The crashes affected many organizations such as banks, airports, and emergency services, and numerous airlines grounded flights worldwide. Within hours, CrowdStrike released a patch for the faulty update that prevented future crashes, but affected computers had to be fixed manually, so problems persisted for some time. Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro.

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. Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft underwent a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012—the corporation’s logos, products, services and websites adopted the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. Microsoft previewed Windows 8, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers, in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview was released on September 13, and was replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012. On June 18, 2012, Microsoft unveiled the Surface, the first computer in the company’s history to have its hardware made by Microsoft.

DreamWorks SKG and Microsoft formed a new company, DreamWorks Interactive (in 2000 acquired by Electronic Arts, which named it EA Los Angeles), to produce interactive and multimedia entertainment properties. Microsoft Works, an integrated office program which combined features typically found in a word processor, spreadsheet, database and other office applications, saw its first release as an application for the Apple Macintosh towards the end of 1986. Microsoft Works would later be sold with other Microsoft products including Microsoft Word and Microsoft Bookshelf, a reference collection introduced in 1987 that was the company’s first CD-ROM product. On August 8, 1989, Microsoft introduced its most successful office product, Microsoft Office.|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 designed 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.}

On July 22, 2020, Microsoft announced plans to close its Mixer service, planning to move existing partners to Facebook Gaming. In January 2019, Microsoft announced that support for Windows 10 Mobile would end on December 10, 2019, and that Windows 10 Mobile users should migrate to iOS or Android phones. On February 20, 2019, Microsoft Corp said it will 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 political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company’s $480 million contract to develop VR headsets for the United States Army, calling it war profiteering. On October 8, 2017, Joe Belfiore announced that work on Windows 10 Mobile was drawing to a close due to lack of market penetration and resultant lack of interest from app developers. On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community despite holding more than 60,000 patents.