Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems and the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, which most notably include the Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet editor, and PowerPoint presentation program. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system and office software suite markets since the 1990s. A Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies, and one of the most valuable brands globally. The company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows and has since expanded into areas such as Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and more. The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI.
In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company’s gaming sales. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered Very Well with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products.
The European Commission issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft’s practice since 2019 gave Teams an unfair market advantage and limited interoperability with competing software. In June 2024, Microsoft faced a potential EU fine after regulators accused it of abusing market power by bundling its Teams video-conferencing app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software. Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak.
- Following media reports about PRISM, NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft.
- The company’s retail locations are part of a greater strategy to help build a connection with its consumers.
- The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI.
- The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company’s gaming sales.
- Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models.
- The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems.
present: Acquisitions, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 11
Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the Microsoft’s software. Among grant recipients from the Asia-Pacific region are the Sri Lankan IT company Fortude, the Thailand-based Vulcan Coalition, and the Indonesian organization Kerjabilitas. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, announced that it had donated an initial batch of supplies, including 15,000 protection goggles, infrared thermometers, medical caps, and protective suits, to healthcare workers in Seattle, with further aid to come. Dave Norris ran an internal joke campaign to save the old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, but it was discarded. Baker stated « The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the « soft » part of the name and convey motion and speed ».
2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Stores
- The cuts affected multiple divisions, including Xbox, with 830 positions eliminated at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.
- When the Internal Revenue Service audited these transactions, ProPublica reported that Microsoft aggressively fought back, including successfully lobbying Congress to change the law to make it harder for the agency to conduct audits of large corporations.
- In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company’s mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions.
- Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide).
- It created one of the world’s largest private bus systems, the « Connector », to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the « Shuttle Connect » uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel.
- Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company.
- In March 2026, Microsoft-controlled discussion forums banned the nickname Microslop, used to express pushback against Microsoft’s Copilot-based and GenAI efforts.
In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft. Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming.
The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. Microsoft is ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models. At Microsoft Build 2026 in June 2026, Microsoft announced the preview availability of Azure Cobalt 200 virtual machines, its second-generation Arm-based custom CPU, offering up to 135% better performance for cloud database workloads and 50% overall CPU performance improvement over the previous generation Cobalt 100.
During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation’s logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices, and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. Most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.
Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI’s employees and investors on its board. The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off 10,000 employees.