Share Flipboard Email. By Mary Bellis Mary Bellis. Mary Bellis covered inventions and inventors for ThoughtCo for 18 years. She is known for her independent films and documentaries, including one about Alexander Graham Bell. Learn about our Editorial Process. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Bellis, Mary. A Short History of Microsoft. The Unusual History of Microsoft Windows. The Most Important Inventions of the 21st Century. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for ThoughtCo.
At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. As Windows began to take hold, more software companies were convinced to develop applications for the operating system, which brought it increased usefulness and further sales momentum.
The company was accused of copyright infringement by Apple, which alleged that Microsoft had copied the "look and feel" of the Macintosh, in a lawsuit that was finally dismissed after five years of litigation. In the company introduced Microsoft Office, a "suite" of programs that eventually came to dominate the market and become Microsoft's best-selling application product.
While the initial release of Office was a discount package, later versions incorporated standard, shared features and included Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the e-mail program Mail, with the Access database management program included in the Office Professional version. Before Microsoft was primarily a supplier to hardware manufacturers, but after the bulk of the company's revenues came from sales to consumers.
While the initial acceptance of Windows NT was disappointing, an upgrade shipped in September of the following year as NT 3. Microsoft announced an agreement to purchase Intuit, the producer of the leading package of personal financial software, called Quicken; however, after the U. Department of Justice filed suit to prevent the takeover on the basis of antitrust concerns, Microsoft withdrew its offer.
In August Microsoft launched its next version of Windows, called Windows 95, which sold more than one million copies in the first four days after its release.
For the rest of the decade Microsoft expanded aggressively into new businesses associated with its core franchise. Its projects included two joint ventures with the National Broadcasting Company under the name MSNBC: an interactive online news service and a cable channel broadcasting news and information 24 hours a day.
The company's web-based services included the Microsoft Network online service, a travel agency, local events listings, car buying information, a personal financial management site, and a joint venture with First Data that allowed consumers to pay their bills online. Microsoft's latest generation of Windows, Windows CE, was designed to expand the franchise into computer-like devices including mobile phones, point-of-sale terminals, pocket organizers, digital televisions, digital cameras, handheld computers, automobile multimedia systems, and pagers.
By early the company had secured more than licensing agreements with manufacturers of these "intelligent appliances. Microsoft's many critics believed that the company's goal in this widespread expansion was to control every delivery channel of information, thereby providing the means to control the content. According to Scott McNealy of rival company Sun Microsystems, "By owning the entry points to the Internet and electronic marketplace, Microsoft has the power to exercise predatory and exclusionary control over the very means for people to access the Internet and all it represents.
The U. After an intensive investigation of Microsoft's competitive practices that had gone on for much of the decade, in the U. Department of Justice and a group of 20 state attorneys general filed two antitrust cases against Microsoft alleging violations of the Sherman Act. The government sought to prove a broad pattern of anticompetitive behavior on Microsoft's part by demonstrating an array of claims, including the following: that Microsoft had a monopoly on the market for operating systems; that the company used that monopoly as a means of preventing other companies from selling its competitors' products most notably Netscape's Internet browser ; that it was illegal for Microsoft to bundle its own browser into the operating system Windows 98 as a means of precluding customers from purchasing Netscape's product; that the company sought to divide markets with competitors; that Microsoft sought to subvert the Java programming language, developed by Sun Microsystems, which it viewed as a threat to Windows; and, finally, that Microsoft's business practices were detrimental to consumers.
The case was conducted under a flurry of media attention, with all parties agreeing that the stakes were extremely high: should Microsoft win, its brand of extremely aggressive capitalism would secure a legal blessing; should the company lose, the company could be forced to license the source code for Windows to competitors, thus destroying its monopoly, or could be broken up into smaller components, crippling its hold over the marketplace.
The fear and resentment that Microsoft and its founder Gates engendered were testament to the company's mythic status and Gates's role as the embodiment of the digital era. While the antitrust suit against Microsoft showed threats of a forced breakup of Microsoft, innovations in the company continued. Encarta Africana, the first complete encyclopedia of black history and culture, was launched, as well as Shop, Microsoft's first online store.
In Microsoft acquired Visio Corporation, the top supplier of business diagramming and technical drawing software. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Art, Literature, and Film History. World War I. Civil Rights Movement. Sign Up. Vietnam War. Early 20th Century US. Cold War. American Revolution. The Justice Department later used that as a key element of its claims in the case United States vs.
Microsoft, which led to no significant financial fines. The main outcome of that settlement was that Microsoft had to allow third parties access to coding tools which would allow them to build competing software to run on the company's own Windows operating system. Many legal observers consider the Microsoft settlement minor, if not outright trivial.
Others have argued that the Justice Department's arguments were based on little more than consumer preference. This issue continues to this day. Microsoft still makes a plurality of its cash from the company's Windows operating system and its Office products, including its Outlook and PowerPoint software. It also has a massive revenue source in the SQL database product, which many other companies rely on for internet infrastructure.
In the company launched one of its most successful product lines to this date, the Xbox. Arguably, however, the s marked the first, and to date biggest, period of missed opportunity for Microsoft.
This was the era in which Apple largely redefined the market for personal computers, first by introducing the iPod and later through the iPhone. Both of these products changed how consumers interact with technology fundamentally and, most likely, permanently. While smart devices had existed before, most notably in the Blackberry and Palm Pilot, no company had pushed them into the mass consumer market. Apple did, and consumers quickly came to expect the power and services of a laptop accessible from their pocket.
Microsoft was slow to adapt, with one of its major attempts the Zune an industry punchline to this day. This came around the same time of several high profile failures in the Windows operating system line such as Vista and ME, the latter of which has been jokingly called "the most expensive virus ever.
Today Microsoft has seemingly recovered from the missteps of the s. Over the s the company entered the smartphone and then tablet markets, releasing a version of Windows 8 and then Windows 10 dedicated to those platforms.
It has also released the Microsoft Surface, a highly popular alternative to the iPad which has earned significant success due to its lower price point and broader range of functionality.
The company has in many ways re-established its dynamic relative to Apple from the s, offering cheaper and more widespread products relative to its competitor's elite products. Leadership at Microsoft has changed hands several times in that same period of time. In Gates stepped down as CEO, handing the office to Steve Ballmer but remaining significantly involved in software and product development at the company.
He formally withdrew from the day-to-day operations completely in Ballmer stepped aside as well in , handing the CEO position to Satya Nadella who remains the chief executive of the company to this day.
This is the beginning of the company's legal troubles. Despite going public in , the company's stock didn't take off for another 10 years.
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