Microsoft was founded by William Henry Bill Gates III and Paul Gardener Allen in the city of Albuquerque, in the United States, in April 1975. Both were friends in those days. Although Paul Allen officially distanced himself from the company in 2000, Bill Gates is still the CEO and the world’s second wealthiest man.
In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen demonstrated how Basic Programming language could be applied to Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, an American company which soon after agreed to distribute their product. The first office outside the United States was opened in Japan in 1978.
The first major breakthrough for the company came when Paul Allen managed to grab a contract by the IBM to create an operating system for the company in 1981. Microsoft didn’t have any operating system at the time. The company purchased a ready-made operating system QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), improved it, renamed it DOS and sold it to the IBM. This established Microsoft as a player to be reckoned with in the computer industry.
1985 saw the release of the first Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Office followed in 1989. Windows 95, an operating system, was launched in 1995 and it turned out to be hugely popular because of its ease of use. This was followed by improved windows and the latest in this category is Windows 7 which has been designed as a ‘simple to use operating system.’ Currently, the company employs more than 93000 employees in more than 100 countries and its assets were worth more than $77 billion in 2009.
Sources : The Gemini Geek :)
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