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. 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. On July 2, 2025, Microsoft announced it would cut nearly 4% of its workforce, around 9,000 jobs, to control costs amid heavy AI infrastructure spending, while also restructuring management and streamlining operations. The company had restructured operations in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but those restructuring efforts had failed. On February 28, 2025, Microsoft announced that Skype would be shutting down on May 5, 2025, to streamline its focus on Microsoft Teams. Microsoft also announced relaunch of its controversial tool, Recall, in November 2024 after addressing privacy concerns.
Integrated Social Media
Microsoft invited developers on Monday to start using Maia’s control software, but it’s not clear when users of the company’s Azure cloud service will be able to utilize servers running on the chip. According to the complaint and media reports, Microsoft’s cloud services may have been used to store or process surveillance-related data. 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 Kinect, a motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller, first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the Xbox One video game console. In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for police surveillance in New York City. The Surface was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company’s history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking.
WhatsApp Messenger
Microsoft on Thursday resolved technical issues that got in the way of people sending and receiving email messages in its Outlook application and completing other tasks. Use limited data to select content. Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources. Use limited data to select advertising.
Google Services
The mobile app gives you the full WhatsApp experience with all the bells and whistles. WhatsApp Web is the online browser version of the mobile app. Once the connection is made, any messages that appear on your WhatsApp mobile app will instantly appear on the browser version, and vice-versa.
Corporate identity
In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance Communications for approximately $16 billion. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles. 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. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company’s war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army.
Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing, as well as its acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings together your favorite apps in one intuitive platform that keeps your data secure with enterprise data protection. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app empowers your employees to do their best work with Copilot in the apps they use daily.
- On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase.
- Microsoft has not released statements regarding Activision’s recent legal controversies regarding employee abuse, but reports have alleged that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, a major target of the controversy, will leave the company after the acquisition is finalized.
- The developer, WhatsApp Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below.
- 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.
- Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows.
On February 20, 2019, Microsoft said it would 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 the political space from hacking. In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program’s 20th anniversary. In May 2016, the company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million.
Global
Microsoft is scheduled to report its latest quarterly results after the market closes on Wednesday, with traders anticipating a big move in the tech giant’s stock following the results. The Maia 200 chip, which is being produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is making its way to Microsoft data centers in Iowa, with deployments headed to the Phoenix area next. The organization requested that European data protection authorities investigate whether this data processing complies with EU law. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. On August 20, 20 Microsoft employees and their allies were arrested after refusing to disperse from a protest on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus.
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. Internal Revenue Service was alleging that the company owed the U.S. $28.9 billion in past taxes, plus penalties related to mis-allocation of corporate profits over a decade. In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company had diverted more than $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico using a mechanism structured to make it seem as if the company was unprofitable on paper. As reported by several news outlets, an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft based in the Republic of Ireland declared £220 bn in profits but paid no corporation tax for the year 2020. This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health. It has also been criticized for the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as “temporary”, and therefore without medical benefits), the use of forced retention tactics, which means that employees would be sued if they tried to leave.
- WhatsApp has become the most popular messaging app in the world, but it has also leaped off mobile devices and onto our browsers.
- During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequency of 2 years, and 13 versions of Windows with a median frequency of 3 years.
- As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft had struggled to keep up with its rivals in providing a modern smartphone operating system, falling behind Apple and Google-sponsored Android in the United States.
- In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.citation needed
- Again you’ll find the QR code on the side of the website the same way as you’ll find it on a desktop or a laptop.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings together your favorite apps and Copilot in one intuitive platform. Anyone in your organization can quickly create documents, presentations, and worksheets within a single, unified app experience. You can send GIFs, photos, videos, documents, emojis, and more. You can do almost everything on WhatsApp Web that you can from your smartphone. Finally, point the iPhone camera at the QR code. In a second, the QR code will be scanned, and you’ll be logged in to WhatsApp Web.
The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. In April 2019, Microsoft became the third U.S. public company to be valued at over $1 trillion.b As of 2024update, Microsoft has the third-highest global brand valuation. In 2018, Microsoft became the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, a position it has repeatedly traded with Apple in the years since. In September 2024, BlackRock and Microsoft announced a $30 billion fund, the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, to invest in AI infrastructure such as data centers and energy projects. Despite CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz clarifying that the issue was not a cyberattack, the incident had widespread consequences, leading to delays in air travel, financial transactions, and medical services globally. On July 19, 2024, a global IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting businesses, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide.
People who use its products and services often end up becoming dependent on them, a process known as vendor lock-in. In 2011, Greenpeace released a report rating the top ten big brands in cloud computing on the sources of electricity for their data centers. Another community site that provides daily videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006. In July 2025, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs, cutting approximately 9,000 employees in its largest workforce reduction in over two years. In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company’s entire workforce.
December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge Legacy browser project in favor of the “New Edge” browser project, featuring a Chromium based backend. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for Internet of things (IoT) technologies related to water management. In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy.
On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Microsoft also named Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company’s portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). https://www.kinghills.casino/ Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally.io into its Viva family of employee experience products. Users can ensure that their calls are encrypted and can utilize a security code that both parties on a call must verify on their respective ends. The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing online education to large numbers of people. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be the last version of the operating system.
