During the first six months of 2013, Microsoft received requests that affected between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts. Following media reports about PRISM, NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. The layoffs primarily affected Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected. As a result, the company will record an impairment and restructuring charge of approximately $950 million, of which approximately $200 million will relate to severance payments.

• The unique combination of so many ideas and experiences that we receive as feedback from satisfied users in numerous countries is a key factor for the success of our products.
• On August 23, 2012, Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo at the opening of its 23rd Microsoft store in Boston, indicating the company’s shift of focus from the classic style to the tile-centric modern interface, which it uses/will use on the Windows Phone platform, Xbox 360, Windows 8 and the upcoming Office Suites.
• In April 2024, it was announced that Microsoft would be opening a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence ‘hub’ around Paddington in London, England.
• 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”.
• Another study, released by the Open Source Development Labs, claimed that the Microsoft studies were “simply outdated and one-sided” and their survey concluded that the TCO of Linux was lower due to Linux administrators managing more servers on average and other reasons.
• The company’s 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees.
• 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.

In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named Microsoft Azure Information Protection. Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced the merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft’s gaming in the future.

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The organization requested that European data protection authorities investigate whether this data processing complies with EU law. In June 2025 Microsoft helped suspend the email account of an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor in the Netherlands who was investigating Israel for war crimes in order to comply with a Trump executive order. Concerns were raised about Microsoft’s licensing practices potentially locking customers into its services and its AI investments possibly sidestepping regulatory oversight. This inquiry is part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to curb the power of major tech companies, especially under FTC chair Lina Khan. 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.

present: Acquisitions, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 11

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 spinnaus sign up 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.
On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and General Electric’s NBC unit created a new 24/7 cable news channel, MSNBC. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what The New York Times called “the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry’s history,” Windows 95 quickly became a success. Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance. With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows.

Flagship stores

In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company’s mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions. 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 the PowerPoint presentation program. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and other fields.

2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox

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1994: Windows and Office

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• In February 2010, however, Microsoft took a stance against adding additional public transport and high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to the State Route 520 and its floating bridge connecting Redmond to Seattle; the company did not want to delay the construction any further.
• It is estimated to encompass over 8 million ft2 (750,000 m2) of office space and 30,000–40,000 employees.
• In May 2016, Microsoft announced another 1,850 job cuts mostly in its Nokia mobile phone division.
• The company is often referred to as a “Velvet Sweatshop”, a term which originated in a 1989 Seattle Times article, and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft’s own employees.
• On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles.
• 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.

On August 20, 20 Microsoft employees and their allies were arrested after refusing to disperse from a protest on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus. After the disruptions at these events, Microsoft contacted the FBI in search of assistance in surveilling its pro-Palestinian employees and their allies. In May 2025, Microsoft issued an unsigned statement confirming that these services had been made available to Israel, while denying that these tools were employed during the massacre of the people of Gaza. The company has a history of antitrust battles in the U.S. and Europe, with over €2 billion in EU fines previously imposed for similar abuses. 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.
On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles. 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. 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.
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. 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.