About Company
Microsoft origins: 1975 to 1981
Bill Gates, who it is believed wrote his first software program at age 13, joined forces with his childhood friend Paul Allen to start Microsoft (originally known as Micro-Soft for microprocessors and software) in April 1975. At the time, Gates left Harvard University, and Allen left his job as a programmer in Boston. They sought to develop a compiler for the Altair 8800, a primitive early personal computer. Gates contacted the manufacturer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), and offered to write a program for a new computer.
Gates and Allen created an interpreter for BASIC, then a mainframe programming language, to use with the Altair. MITS hired Gates and Allen in 1975. Within a year, they left to focus on their fledgling company, Microsoft, which they incorporated in 1981.
Microsoft history: 1980 to 2025
In 1980, IBM engaged Microsoft to develop an OS for IBM's PC. Called PC-DOS by IBM, Microsoft also marketed its own version, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), which debuted in 1981 and which IBM licensed for its PC. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw Microsoft's fortunes soar, with the company adding more companies to its client roster and licensing MS-DOS to many of them.
The initial versions of MS-DOS lacked a GUI, so users had to type in various commands to open any program. However, Microsoft later developed Interface Manager, a GUI that ran on top of DOS and became Windows in 1985. Windows, which included numerous graphical features such as drop-down menus and scroll bars, was inspired by the same Xerox PARC research project that Apple used to move an arrow across a graphical desktop.
In 1986, Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond and went public, offering $21 per share in its IPO. The IPO made Gates a multimillionaire. In less than a decade, he became a multibillionaire and one of the world's richest people.
Since the late 1990s, Microsoft has been embroiled in numerous legal cases. In 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice filed antitrust charges against the company, accusing it of using its dominant market position to drive its competitors -- such as Netscape -- out of business. Microsoft lost the case, appealed, and lost again. Gates and other Microsoft leaders were forced eventually to modify certain corporate practices to reduce Microsoft's unfair market monopoly. Due to its near-monopoly practices, Microsoft continued throughout the 2000s to face legal challenges and had to pay hefty fines. Despite these challenges, Microsoft remains a healthy technology company with a strong market presence. As of January 2025, it is one of a handful of companies worldwide with trillion-dollar-plus market capitalizations.
Over the past two decades, Microsoft has acquired numerous companies, many of them well-known, including GitHub, LinkedIn, Activision Blizzard and Skype. Since February 2014, CEO Satya Nadella has led Microsoft.
Microsoft products
By the late 1980s, Microsoft had become the world's largest PC software company. In the 1990s and 2000s, it continued to grow, developing and releasing new, innovative PC products, such as its Windows OSes, Office software suite and Internet Explorer web browser.
Over time, the company has forayed into the development of desktops and laptops, Xbox gaming consoles, security products such as antivirus software, security operations platform, endpoint detection and response software, and identity solutions. More recently, Microsoft has started expanding its global presence with cloud-based and AI-enabled products like Azure Cloud, the Microsoft 365 software productivity suite, and the Copilot AI-powered chatbot.
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A look at how Copilot supports user prompts from Office apps.
Windows OS
For the first few years after releasing the Windows OS, Microsoft struggled to make the product a success.
It introduced Windows 1.0 in 1983, but the actual release didn't happen until November 1985. Heavily influenced by Apple's existing GUI, Windows 1.0 was more user-friendly than the command-line interface of MS-DOS, with menus a user could access with a keyboard or mouse. However, the presence of Apple's GUI made it hard for Windows to gain traction.
It wasn't until the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 that the OS gained some respect from the PC user base. The release of Windows 3.1 in 1992 finally led to Microsoft OSes earning widespread acceptance. In 1995, the release of Windows 95 -- an OS that integrated MS-DOS with Windows and was as easy to use as Apple's Mac OS -- saw the beginning of a shift from DOS-based applications to Windows-based applications. This fueled the exponential growth and popularity of Windows as the preferred OS for PCs worldwide. By the 1990s, Windows had outsold most of its rival OSes, including CP/M and IBM OS/2.
But to run Windows, the PCs first had to load DOS. DOS was a 16-bit OS, while Windows was a 32-bit OS. The result was a crash-prone Windows. In 1992, Microsoft hired veteran developer David Cutler from Digital Equipment Corp. with the intention of building a new 32-bit OS from the ground up. It was called Windows NT -- the NT standing for "new technology." The first version, Windows NT 3.1, an upgrade over Windows 3.1, was released in 1992.
While NT resolved the compatibility issues, its initial versions created other problems. System requirements were so great that few PCs could use it, so Microsoft shifted Windows NT to be a server OS. However, as hardware improved, more people began using Windows NT as a desktop OS.
In the late 1990s, Microsoft began merging Windows 95 and Windows NT into one OS. The result was Windows 2000 -- released in the year 2000 -- followed by Windows XP the following year for desktops, and Windows Server 2003 two years later. Even before the release of Windows 2000, previous versions of Windows were running 90% of the world's PCs. Following Windows 2000, Microsoft released Windows XP in 2001, Windows Vista in 2007 and Windows 10 in 2015. The most recent version of Windows, Windows 11, came out in 2021.
Our opportunity and responsibility
We’re living in an era in which technology has the potential to power awesome advancements across every sector of our economy and society. This places us at a historic intersection of opportunity and responsibility. Our mission has never been more important. To realize it, we must create a future that benefits everyone.
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Our corporate values
Our values align to our mission, support our culture, and serve as a declaration of how we treat each other, our customers, and our partners.
Corporate Address
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-7329
USA
Tel: (425) 882-8080
Fax: (425) 706-7329