computer science

Microsoft

Microsoft is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Microsoft rather than just read about it. In short: Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. 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.

Key takeaways

Microsoft belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Microsoft to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Microsoft from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. 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. 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. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the PC operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. 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. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified its business. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. He oversaw the then-largest of Microsoft's corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line—the Surface—in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia. Since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing and acquired LinkedIn in 2016. 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. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system and office software suite markets since the 1990s. 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. Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network. The company also offers online services such as Bing web search, the MSN web portal, the Outlook.com (Hotmail) email service, and the Microsoft Store. In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft. most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio. Microsoft became the third publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in April 2019. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices, and the company's software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. Microsoft has also been criticized for its role in providing services to Israel during the Gaza war.

History

1972–1985: Founding

Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming. In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration. Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested the name "Micro-Soft", short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft. Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington, in January 1979. Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, licensed from AT&T Corporation a year before, called Xenix, but it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS to be used in the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to IBM PC DOS. Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, so other companies had to reverse engineer it for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's lymphoma.

1985–1994: Windows and Office

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Microsoft: Paul Allen and Bill Gates on October 19, 1981, after signing a pivotal contract with IBM[2]: 228 — Paul Allen and Bill Gates on October 19, 1981, after signing a pivotal contract with IBM[2]: 228

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Microsoft

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Microsoft claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Microsoft before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Microsoft ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Microsoft

In research: Microsoft appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Microsoft in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Microsoft is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1975 establishments in New Mexico, 1980s initial public offerings, American brands, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Microsoft outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Microsoft in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Microsoft means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Microsoft out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Microsoft in simple terms?

Why does Microsoft matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Microsoft?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Microsoft.