Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation which produces computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washington, United States. Microsoft is market-dominant in the IBM PC compatible operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android. The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops, laptops, tabs, gadgets, and servers, including Internet search, the digital services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure), and software development (Visual Studio). in 2018 Microsoft reclaimed its position as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. In April 2019, Microsoft reached the trillion-dollar market cap, becoming the third U.S. public company to be valued at over $1 trillion after Apple and Amazon respectively. As of 2021, Microsoft has the fourth-highest global brand valuation. Microsoft began planning a major replacement for all of its operating systems in 2001. The project, code-named Longhorn, encountered numerous delays, in part because of efforts to address the public’s growing concern with computer security and consumers’ desire for PCs to have greater integration with a full range of entertainment equipment within the modern electronic home. The company started over, and the new operating system, renamed Vista, was released to other software developers late in 2006 and to the general public in 2007. Like most new operating systems, Vista met with initial problems involving incompatibilities with older computer peripherals. More problematic for the new operating system was its “bloated” structure, which required a very fast microprocessor and large amounts of dedicated computer memory for proper functioning.