The Microsoft History

MicrosoftÐ'® Most Popular and Controversial Name in the World. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Microsoft's best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. These products have prominent positions in their respective markets, with market share estimates as high as 90% or more for Microsoft Windows as of 2006 and for Microsoft Office as of 2003. One of Bill Gates' key visions for the company is "to get a workstation running our software onto every desk and eventually in every home".

Microsoft Corporation Founded to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. DOS (Disk Operating System) was the operating system that brought the company its first real success. On August 12, 1981,Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2. On November 20, 1985, Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows, originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system.

In 1989, Microsoft introduced its flagship office suite, Microsoft Office. This was a bundle of separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. On May 22, 1990 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. The new version of Microsoft's operating system boasted such new features as streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor. In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, a business operating system with the Windows 3.1 user interface but an entirely different kernel. In 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95