[13] The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer,[14] which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device.

"[34] Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web.

[36] The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API.

[39] Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign[40] and what The New York Times called "the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry's history,"[41] Windows 95 quickly became a success.

[11]: 111, 228 [15] Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to (among other things) increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software.

[58] The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers.

[90] Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 that suggests that the corporation may use the Kinect camera system to monitor the behavior of television viewers as part of a plan to make the viewing experience more interactive.

[91] On July 19, 2013, Microsoft stocks suffered their biggest one-day percentage sell-off since the year 2000, after its fourth-quarter report raised concerns among investors on the poor showings of both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet.

[116] Microsoft planned to launch a preview of Intune for Education "in the coming weeks", with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $30 per device, or through volume licensing agreements.

[128] 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.

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.

[140] The previous version of GPT-3, called GPT-2, made headlines for being "too dangerous to release" and had numerous capabilities, including designing websites, prescribing medication, answering questions, and penning articles.

[159] Activision Blizzard is best known for producing franchises, including but not limited to Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tony Hawk's, Guitar Hero, and Overwatch.

[170][171] On November 20, 2023, Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman, who had been ousted as CEO of OpenAI just days earlier, and Greg Brockman, who had resigned as president, would join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.

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.

According to Aaron Tilley of The Wall Street Journal this is "marking the biggest boardroom departure in the tech industry since the death of longtime rival and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs.

"[198] On January 13, 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft's board of directors plans to hire an external law firm to review its sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies, and to release a summary of how the company handled past allegations of misconduct against Bill Gates and other corporate executives.

[214] The key trends of Microsoft are (as at the financial year ending June 30):[215][216] In November 2018, the company won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring augmented reality (AR) headset technology into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers.

[224] As part of the "Get the Facts" campaign, Microsoft highlighted the .NET Framework trading platform that it had developed in partnership with Accenture for the London Stock Exchange, claiming that it provided "five nines" reliability.

[248] However, in June 2013, an official statement from Microsoft flatly denied their participation in the program: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis.

[250] In December 2013, the company made a statement to further emphasize the fact that they take their customers' privacy and data protection very seriously, even saying that "government snooping potentially now constitutes an 'advanced persistent threat,' alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks".

On July 1, 2014, as part of this program, they opened the first (of many) Microsoft Transparency Center, which provides "participating governments with the ability to review source code for our key products, assure themselves of their software integrity, and confirm there are no "back doors.

[261] 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.

[265] The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a report of how progressive the organization deems company policies towards LGBT employees, rated Microsoft as 87% from 2002 to 2004 and as 100% from 2005 to 2010 after they allowed gender expression.

[274][276] 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.

As reported by several news outlets,[322][323] 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.

Dame Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP in the UK said, "It is unsurprising – yet still shocking – that massively wealthy global corporations openly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the profits they make in the countries where they undertake business".

[324][325] In 2023, Microsoft reported in a securities filing that the U.S. 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.

The European Commission issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft's practice since 2019 gave Teams an unfair market advantage and limited interoperability with competing software.

[338] 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.