Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It’s known for a lot of things. One of which is making it’s founder the most wealthy person on Earth. Another is that it’s currently the world’s largest producer of software. With their huge leaps in home computer technology, Microsoft helped shape the last few decades, and I’m sure they will the next few. Microsoft will be remembered as one of the most aggressive corporations to ever stalk silicon valley, acquiring much of their competition. There are many interesting and shocking facts about Microsoft, many which you’ll have a hard time believing. Speaking of which, here are 20 amazing facts about Microsoft.
20: An estimated 12 thousand employees of Microsoft have become millionaires, and three have become billionaires.
19: At one point, Microsoft was seriously considering acquiring the Sega Games company. This was before the Xbox became such a massive success.
18: In 2015, Microsoft was the official sponsor of Finland’s national basketball team.
17: Microsoft had it’s first ever quarterly loss in July of 2012.
16: Microsoft files around 3 thousand patents each year. It’s like if Thomas Edison was a corporation.
15: In 1987, Bill Gates became the youngest person to make a billion dollars. He was just 31. And making a billion dollars was even more of a big deal back in the 1980s.
14: One year later, Bill Gates purchased a home for 2 million dollars. Right now that same house is valued at over 115 million dollars.
13: Microsoft just announced it’s plan to purchase LinkedIn for the huge sum of 26,2 billion dollars. This is much bigger than it’s acquisition of Skype, which was it’s biggest up until now. They purchased Skype in 2011 for 8.5 billion dollars.
12: Microsoft helped Apple develop their computers. That all changed when Microsoft decided to produce and sell their own brand of home computers. Their relationship was made a lot worse when Microsoft started selling their computers for a lower price than Apple’s.
11: The name Microsoft is literally just a combination of the words microcomputer and software. This is because Microsoft was the first company to mass produce software for microcomputers.
10: Microsoft owes everything to Excel. It was their first office program, and it put the company on the map. This was back when making a spreadsheet took soooo long, and people were desperate for shortcuts. Microsoft office all grew from that one program.
9: They might be planning a global takeover. Conspiracy theorists point out that Microsoft employs over 1 thousand researchers, who focus on different areas. It’s the Illuminati I say!
8: It took Microsoft eleven years before they went public. This was highly unusual as a company seeing as rapid growth as Microsoft did would be expected to go public sooner. But Microsoft didn’t need to be valued on the stock market as they were making more money than other tech companies.
7: In 2006, Microsoft had the chance to buy YouTube for just 500 million dollars, but they didn’t think it could ever be that valuable. Today YouTube is worth between 25 and 40 billion dollars. So they made a big mistake.
6: Researchers have judged Bill Gates to be a genius.
5: With the founding of Xbox in 2001, Microsoft became the first American company to produce a games console since Atari closed down in 1996.
4: Microsoft released a tablet in 2001, long before Apple even began work on theirs. It wasn’t successful at all though, meaning that most have simply forgotten about it by now.
3: They don’t sell software. They give away their software for free, but require people pay for a licence to use the software. It’s a brutally effective business model.
2: The current CEO of Microsoft is worth an estimated 45 billion dollars.
1: In the first year, Microsoft’s revenue was just 16 thousand dollars. And that just goes to show that you don’t need to be an overnight success. Focus on what your business can become, rather than what it is currently.
