Microsoft Wikipedia

Since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing and acquired LinkedIn in 2016. Microsoft 365 is a subscription service that offers a suite of productivity tools and cloud-based services from Microsoft. If you’re in the YouTube Partner Program, you can monetize videos with music and sound effects from the Audio Library. If you’re using a track with a Creative Commons  license, you must credit the artist in your video’s description.

• In November 2014, Microsoft overtook ExxonMobil to become the second most-valuable company by market capitalization, behind only Apple Inc.
• In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off 10,000 employees.
• On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of its first interactive whiteboard, named Surface Hub.
• In July 2024, it was reported that the company was laying off its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team.
• Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector.

MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software. The group, accessed “a very small percentage” of Microsoft corporate email accounts, which also included members of its senior leadership team and employees in its cybersecurity and legal teams. The DoJ had “changed data request rules on alerting the Internet users about agencies accessing their information.” The statement also marked the beginning of three-part program to enhance Microsoft’s encryption and transparency efforts. Following media reports about PRISM, NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. Microsoft recognizes seven trade unionsb representing 1,750 workers in the United States at its video game subsidiaries Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax Media.

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At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase. Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression “eating your own dog food” is used to describe the policy of using pre-release and beta versions of products inside Microsoft to test them in “real-world” situations. Helpful people can be elected by peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits. Free technical support is traditionally provided through online Usenet newsgroups, and CompuServe in the past, monitored by Microsoft employees; there can be several newsgroups for a single product.

In December 2013, the company made a statement to further emphasize that it takes its customers’ privacy and data protection very seriously, saying that “government snooping potentially now constitutes an ‘advanced persistent threat,’ alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks”. Microsoft provides information about reported bugs in its software to intelligence agencies of the United States government, prior to the public release of the fix. In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company’s entire workforce. 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, which was completed in 2023. In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software. In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp.

Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986, and went public with an initial public offering (IPO) at the NASDAQ exchange on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices, and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. In April 2019, Microsoft became the third publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion. The company also provides a range of consumer Internet services such as Bing web search, the MSN web portal, the Outlook.com (Hotmail) email service, and the Microsoft Store. Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network. Under his direction, the company has expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022 and acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023.

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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 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. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas. Azure Services Platform, the company’s entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects. 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.

1994: Windows and Office

On July 20, 2012, Microsoft posted its first quarterly loss ever, despite earning record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year, with a net loss of $492 million due to a writedown related to the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 1xbet login 2007. Though the company had subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft’s stock remained steady for years. When Microsoft went public and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in 1986, the opening stock price was $21; after the trading day, the price closed at $27.75. On March 13, 2020, Gates announced that he is leaving the board of directors of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus more on his philanthropic efforts.