60 Fun Facts About Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and which childhood friend?

The two had already run a company called Traf-O-Data that sold a rudimentary computer for analysing road traffic.

The company's name, first written with a hyphen, was coined by a co-founder from what two words?

The company was formally established on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO.

Microsoft's first product was a BASIC interpreter for which early microcomputer?

Gates told the maker, MITS, that he had a working interpreter before he had written a line; the demo in Albuquerque in March 1975 worked flawlessly anyway.

In which city was Microsoft based when it demonstrated Altair BASIC in 1975?

The company moved its headquarters to Bellevue in January 1979 and to Redmond in 1986.

Microsoft's headquarters are in which Washington city?

The move from Bellevue to Redmond came on February 26, 1986, weeks before the company's stock market debut.

MS-DOS began life as a product Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products called what?

IBM had asked for a CP/M-style system for its new PC; Microsoft bought the clone, rebranded it, and crucially kept the rights to sell it to others.

Microsoft's first operating system, released in 1980 before MS-DOS, was a licensed version of what?

Called Xenix, it was licensed from AT&T a year earlier.

Windows 1.0 was released on November 20 of which year?

It was a graphical shell on top of MS-DOS, and Microsoft was simultaneously co-developing OS/2 with IBM.

Microsoft's 1986 stock market debut is estimated to have made how many employees millionaires?

It also minted an estimated four billionaires; the shares listed on the NASDAQ on March 13, 1986.

Gates's co-founder left day-to-day work at the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with what?

He recovered and went on to own the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers.

Bill Gates dropped out of which university to build Microsoft?

He enrolled in 1973 and took Math 55, the notoriously hard freshman course, before leaving.

At which private Seattle academy did the two founders meet and first get access to a computer?

Gates was born in Seattle on October 28, 1955.

The company's text-editing application was first released in 1983 under what longer title?

It was developed by Charles Simonyi, hired from Xerox PARC, and free demo copies were bundled with PC World magazine.

Bill Gates announced Excel in 1985 at a joint press conference with which rival?

Versions before Excel 2.0 ran only on the Macintosh; the aim was to beat Lotus 1-2-3, which had crushed Microsoft's earlier Multiplan.

Microsoft bought PowerPoint in 1987, for about $14 million, from which company?

The first version ran only on Macintosh and was designed for producing overhead transparencies.

In which year did Microsoft first bundle Word, Excel and other apps together as Microsoft Office?

Windows 3.0 launched the same year, and both products became dominant in their fields.

Which Rolling Stones song did the Windows 95 launch campaign use, a nod to the new button?

The campaign was estimated at $1 billion, and the New York Times called it the splashiest product introduction in industry history.

Windows 95 was released on August 24, 1995. Which of these features did it introduce?

Internet Explorer was not in the retail release; it came in the Plus! pack and with OEM copies.

Microsoft Bob, the cartoon-house interface released in March 1995, featured which animated guide?

It was discontinued in early 1996 and is regularly listed among the worst products in tech history.

Vincent Connare created Comic Sans in 1994 after seeing which product's beta use Times New Roman in speech bubbles?

He finished too late for Bob, so it debuted in 3D Movie Maker instead.

The animated Office Assistant everyone calls Clippy is officially named what?

It was one of several characters, alongside a cat, a dog and a robot, and became a byword for annoying software.

Windows Solitaire, included since Windows 3.0 in 1990, was programmed by whom?

Susan Kare, who drew the original Macintosh icons, designed the card deck.

Windows XP's default wallpaper Bliss was photographed in 1996 in which region?

Former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear shot it on medium-format Velvia film, which is why the greens are so vivid.

Windows XP was released on October 25 of which year?

It unified the consumer and NT lines on the NT codebase, and the first Xbox followed weeks later.

Bill Gates handed the CEO job to Steve Ballmer in January 2000 and took what new title for himself?

Ballmer was an old college friend of Gates and had joined the company in 1980.

Before joining Microsoft, Steve Ballmer worked as an assistant product manager at which company?

He shared an office there with Jeff Immelt, later CEO of General Electric, then briefly tried writing screenplays in Hollywood.

Which NBA franchise did Steve Ballmer buy in 2014?

He bought the team in 2014, the year he stepped down as Microsoft CEO.

The original Xbox launched in November 2001 alongside which game, its signature title?

Microsoft had bought the developer, Bungie, in 2000 specifically to make it a launch title.

The idea for the Xbox came from four engineers on which Microsoft team?

The name is a nod to DirectX; the console was designed to compete with Sony's PlayStation 2.

Microsoft's motion-sensing camera controller, first released in November 2010, was called what?

It was upgraded and bundled with the Xbox One in 2013.

Microsoft's Zune, launched in 2006, was made in cooperation with which Japanese company?

The brand was discontinued in June 2012, having never seriously dented Apple's lead.

Microsoft's 2010 Windows Phone interface used a flat design language codenamed what?

The look spread across the company's logos and products in 2011 and 2012.

In 2011 the company made its then-largest acquisition, buying which communications app for $8.5 billion?

Skype was shut down in May 2025 so Microsoft could focus on Teams.

The Surface, unveiled in June 2012, was notable as the company's first what?

The Xbox was a Microsoft device, but the Surface was its first in-house PC.

Which Finnish company's mobile phone business did Microsoft buy in a deal announced in 2013?

The unit became Microsoft Mobile; within two years Microsoft wrote off $7.6 billion and laid off 7,800 people.

Satya Nadella became Microsoft's CEO on February 4, 2014, having previously led which division?

Born in Hyderabad in 1967, he refocused the company on cloud computing.

Which game studio, maker of Minecraft, did Microsoft buy in September 2014 for $2.5 billion?

Minecraft went on to become the best-selling video game of all time, with over 400 million copies sold.

Minecraft was originally created in Java by which Swedish developer?

Jens Bergensten took over development after the full release; Persson had previously worked at the browser-game maker King.

Which professional networking site did the company buy in 2016 for $26.2 billion?

It was the company's largest acquisition until Activision Blizzard in 2022.

How long after its March 2016 launch was Microsoft's chatbot Tay shut down for offensive tweets?

The name was an acronym for 'thinking about you', and it was billed as 'the AI with zero chill'.

Which rival operating system did Steve Ballmer call a 'cancer' in 2001?

Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation in November 2016 at $500,000 a year, a move analysts had once deemed unthinkable.

Which code-hosting platform did Microsoft buy in 2018 for $7.5 billion?

The deal was announced on June 4 and closed on October 26, 2018.

Microsoft became the third US public company valued at over $1 trillion in which year?

Its valuation neared $2 trillion in 2021 on pandemic-era cloud and gaming demand.

In 2021 a new OS version caused confusion because its maker had earlier called which version the last ever?

It reached the general public on October 5, 2021.

The company's biggest acquisition, completed in 2023, was which game publisher for $68.7 billion?

Phil Spencer became the first CEO of the new Microsoft Gaming division, which also houses ZeniMax and Xbox Game Studios.

The company's cloud computing platform, a rival to Amazon Web Services, is called what?

Its Cobalt CPU and Maia AI chip, unveiled in 2023, were designed to run it.

Microsoft announced a multi-billion-dollar deal in January 2023 with which ChatGPT developer?

Later that year it briefly hired the company's ousted CEO Sam Altman before he was reinstated.

Which 24-hour cable news channel did Microsoft co-found with NBC in 1996?

Microsoft sold its 50 percent stake in July 2012.

The EU's 2004 fine forced the company to sell XP editions stripped of which program?

The stripped-down editions were sold as Windows XP Home Edition N and Professional N.

Bill Gates's internal 1995 memo that turned the company toward the web was titled what?

Dated May 26, 1995, it is credited with letting Microsoft catch the web early while Lotus, Borland and WordPerfect fell behind.

The company's first international office, opened in 1977, was in which country?

It came from an agreement with ASCII Magazine and was called ASCII Microsoft.

Which hardware product, released in 1983 with its new publishing arm, was one of Microsoft's first non-software items?

The mouse arrived two years before Windows 1.0 gave people much reason to use one.

Which security firm's faulty update caused the July 2024 global Windows outage?

Its CEO stressed it was not a cyberattack, but flights, payments and hospitals were disrupted for days.

Which company did Microsoft license its first browser from to create Internet Explorer?

Spyglass later disputed the deal: it was owed a royalty per copy sold, but Microsoft never sold a copy, bundling the browser free with Windows.

What was the codename of Windows Vista during its early development?

Vista reached consumers on January 30, 2007, and was criticised for the horsepower its Aero theme and desktop widgets demanded.

Microsoft's short-lived Kin phones of 2010 grew out of its 2008 purchase of which company?

The phones went on sale on May 14, 2010 and were discontinued within two months because of poor sales.

Which speech-recognition company did Microsoft agree to buy for about $16 billion in 2021?

The deal closed in March 2022, as pandemic-driven demand for cloud and gaming pushed Microsoft's valuation toward $2 trillion.

How many units did the original Xbox sell, beating the GameCube but trailing the PS2?

The PS2 sold 155 million and the GameCube 21 million; the Xbox 360 later reached 84 million but was edged by the PS3's 87 million.

Which 1983 home computer standard, created with numerous partners, ran Microsoft's MSX-DOS?

MSX machines became relatively popular in Japan, Europe and South America while IBM PC clones flooded the US market.

In which year did the five-year Apple v. Microsoft copyright case end in Microsoft's favour?

The same year Fortune named Microsoft the most innovative company in the US and Windows became the world's most-used GUI operating system.