Microsoft Wikipedia

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. Microsoft noted in a blog post that the attack might have been prevented if the accounts in question had enabled multi-factor authentication, a defensive measure which is widely recommended in the industry, including by Microsoft itself. The group, accessed «a very small percentage» of Microsoft corporate email accounts, which also included members of its senior leadership team and employees in its cybersecurity and legal teams. The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. 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. Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models. At Microsoft Build 2026 in June 2026, Microsoft announced the preview availability of Azure Cobalt 200 virtual machines, its second-generation Arm-based custom CPU, offering up to 135% better performance for cloud database workloads and 50% overall CPU performance improvement over the previous generation Cobalt 100. Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI’s employees and investors on its board. The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off 10,000 employees.

2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Stores

• Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network.
• To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of «holiday stores» across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of «bricks-and-mortar» Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012.
• In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp.
• Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models.
• Baker stated «The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the «soft» part of the name and convey motion and speed».

Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the Microsoft’s software. Among grant recipients from the Asia-Pacific region are the Sri Lankan IT company Fortude, the Thailand-based Vulcan Coalition, and the Indonesian organization Kerjabilitas. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, announced that it had donated an initial batch of supplies, including 15,000 protection goggles, infrared thermometers, medical caps, and protective suits, to healthcare workers in Seattle, with further aid to come. Dave Norris ran an internal joke campaign to save the old logo, Very Well which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, but it was discarded. Baker stated «The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the «soft» part of the name and convey motion and speed».

2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Stores

The layoffs primarily affected Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected. 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. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to government bonds.

• The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies.
• A Microsoft spokesperson stated that the corporation runs several programs that facilitate the sharing of such information with the U.S. government.
• It created one of the world’s largest private bus systems, the «Connector», to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the «Shuttle Connect» uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel.
• In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company’s mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions.
• In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested what they termed war profiteering by the company from its $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army.

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. In June 2024, Microsoft faced a potential EU fine after regulators accused it of abusing market power by bundling its Teams video-conferencing app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software. 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.

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

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). The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing online education to large numbers of people. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested what they termed war profiteering by the company from its $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army.