This Microsoft trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and runs the company's whole story: two Lakeside schoolboys bluffing MITS about an Altair BASIC interpreter, the 86-DOS purchase that became MS-DOS, the 1986 IPO that made 12,000 millionaires, Windows 1.0 through Windows 11, and the Office apps, one of which Microsoft did not even write. It covers the Xbox and Halo, Minecraft and Mojang, the Surface, Azure and the OpenAI deal, plus the products people love to mock: Microsoft Bob, Zune, Comic Sans, Clippy and the chatbot that lasted 16 hours. The early questions suit anyone who has used a PC; the later ones ask about Xenix, Forethought, Wes Cherry and the memo that turned the company toward the internet. It works for a tech-team quiz, an office icebreaker or a computing-history classroom. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and company records, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and which childhood friend?
Paul Allen
The two had already run a company called Traf-O-Data that sold a rudimentary computer for analysing road traffic.
Q 02The company's name, first written with a hyphen, was coined by a co-founder from what two words?
Micro-computer software
The company was formally established on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO.
Q 03Microsoft's first product was a BASIC interpreter for which early microcomputer?
Altair 8800
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.
Q 04In which city was Microsoft based when it demonstrated Altair BASIC in 1975?
Albuquerque, New Mexico
The company moved its headquarters to Bellevue in January 1979 and to Redmond in 1986.
Q 05Microsoft's headquarters are in which Washington city?
Redmond
The move from Bellevue to Redmond came on February 26, 1986, weeks before the company's stock market debut.
Q 06MS-DOS began life as a product Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products called what?
86-DOS
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.
Q 07Microsoft's first operating system, released in 1980 before MS-DOS, was a licensed version of what?
Unix
Called Xenix, it was licensed from AT&T a year earlier.
Q 08Windows 1.0 was released on November 20 of which year?
1985
It was a graphical shell on top of MS-DOS, and Microsoft was simultaneously co-developing OS/2 with IBM.
Q 09Microsoft's 1986 stock market debut is estimated to have made how many employees millionaires?
About 12,000
It also minted an estimated four billionaires; the shares listed on the NASDAQ on March 13, 1986.
Q 10Gates's co-founder left day-to-day work at the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with what?
Hodgkin's lymphoma
He recovered and went on to own the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers.
Q 11Bill Gates dropped out of which university to build Microsoft?
Harvard
He enrolled in 1973 and took Math 55, the notoriously hard freshman course, before leaving.
Q 12At which private Seattle academy did the two founders meet and first get access to a computer?
Lakeside
Gates was born in Seattle on October 28, 1955.
Q 13The company's text-editing application was first released in 1983 under what longer title?
Multi-Tool Word
It was developed by Charles Simonyi, hired from Xerox PARC, and free demo copies were bundled with PC World magazine.
Q 21The animated Office Assistant everyone calls Clippy is officially named what?
Clippit
It was one of several characters, alongside a cat, a dog and a robot, and became a byword for annoying software.
Q 22Windows Solitaire, included since Windows 3.0 in 1990, was programmed by whom?
An intern named Wes Cherry
Susan Kare, who drew the original Macintosh icons, designed the card deck.
Q 23Windows XP's default wallpaper Bliss was photographed in 1996 in which region?
Napa and Sonoma, California
Former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear shot it on medium-format Velvia film, which is why the greens are so vivid.
Q 14Bill Gates announced Excel in 1985 at a joint press conference with which rival?
Steve Jobs of Apple
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.
Q 15Microsoft bought PowerPoint in 1987, for about $14 million, from which company?
Forethought
The first version ran only on Macintosh and was designed for producing overhead transparencies.
Q 16In which year did Microsoft first bundle Word, Excel and other apps together as Microsoft Office?
1990
Windows 3.0 launched the same year, and both products became dominant in their fields.
Q 17Which Rolling Stones song did the Windows 95 launch campaign use, a nod to the new button?
Start Me Up
The campaign was estimated at $1 billion, and the New York Times called it the splashiest product introduction in industry history.
Q 18Windows 95 was released on August 24, 1995. Which of these features did it introduce?
The Start menu and taskbar
Internet Explorer was not in the retail release; it came in the Plus! pack and with OEM copies.
Q 19Microsoft Bob, the cartoon-house interface released in March 1995, featured which animated guide?
Rover the dog
It was discontinued in early 1996 and is regularly listed among the worst products in tech history.
Q 20Vincent Connare created Comic Sans in 1994 after seeing which product's beta use Times New Roman in speech bubbles?
Bob
He finished too late for Bob, so it debuted in 3D Movie Maker instead.
Q 24Windows XP was released on October 25 of which year?
2001
It unified the consumer and NT lines on the NT codebase, and the first Xbox followed weeks later.
Q 25Bill Gates handed the CEO job to Steve Ballmer in January 2000 and took what new title for himself?
Chief Software Architect
Ballmer was an old college friend of Gates and had joined the company in 1980.
Q 26Before joining Microsoft, Steve Ballmer worked as an assistant product manager at which company?
Procter & Gamble
He shared an office there with Jeff Immelt, later CEO of General Electric, then briefly tried writing screenplays in Hollywood.
Q 27Which NBA franchise did Steve Ballmer buy in 2014?
Los Angeles Clippers
He bought the team in 2014, the year he stepped down as Microsoft CEO.
Q 28The original Xbox launched in November 2001 alongside which game, its signature title?
Halo: Combat Evolved
Microsoft had bought the developer, Bungie, in 2000 specifically to make it a launch title.
Q 29The idea for the Xbox came from four engineers on which Microsoft team?
DirectX
The name is a nod to DirectX; the console was designed to compete with Sony's PlayStation 2.
Q 30Microsoft's motion-sensing camera controller, first released in November 2010, was called what?
Kinect
It was upgraded and bundled with the Xbox One in 2013.