On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced the merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft’s gaming in the future. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Mojang, best known for Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. A developer preview was released on September 13, which was subsequently replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and released to the public in May. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas.
On March 13, 2020, Gates announced that he is leaving the board of directors of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus more on his philanthropic efforts. Microsoft is ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. On July 2, 2025, Microsoft announced it would cut nearly 4% of its workforce, around 9,000 jobs, to control costs amid heavy AI infrastructure spending, while also restructuring management and streamlining operations. The company had restructured operations in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but those restructuring efforts had failed. On February 28, 2025, Microsoft announced that Skype would be shutting down on May 5, 2025, to streamline its focus on Microsoft Teams. Microsoft also announced relaunch of its controversial tool, Recall, in November 2024 after addressing privacy concerns.

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• You can easily access your WhatsApp messages on a computer by using WhatsApp Web or the desktop client.
• Anyone in your organization can quickly create documents, presentations, and worksheets within a single, unified app experience.
• You’ll need to scan the QR code using your phone.
• Microsoft’s timeline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products was 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear.
• On August 20, 20 Microsoft employees and their allies were arrested after refusing to disperse from a protest on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus.

Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones using the Windows Phone OS. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped its aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS that was released in October that year. Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center. On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986, and went public with an initial public offering (IPO) at the NASDAQ exchange on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.

• Despite CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz clarifying that the issue was not a cyberattack, the incident had widespread consequences, leading to delays in air travel, financial transactions, and medical services globally.
• Subsequently, two employees interrupted AI executive Mustafa Suleyman at a speaking event on April 4, 2025, in protest at the company’s support of Israel.
• Free technical support is traditionally provided through online Usenet newsgroups, and CompuServe in the past, monitored by Microsoft employees; there can be several newsgroups for a single product.
• In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program’s 20th anniversary.
• In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company had diverted more than $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico using a mechanism structured to make it seem as if the company was unprofitable on paper.

In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. More recently, it has been criticized for its role in providing services to Israel during the Gaza war. It has been criticized for its monopolistic practices, and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. In April 2019, Microsoft became the third public U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market since the 1990s. Under Nadella’s direction, the company has expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022 and the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in 2023.
Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies,a and one of the most valuable brands globally. While there’s no standalone WhatsApp client, you can use WhatsApp’s web app and desktop client to send messages via your smartphone. To proceed, you’ll need to scan this QR code using your smartphone’s WhatsApp app. The differences between the web version and the mobile app are the same as the desktop app. Share messages, photos, videos and documents across mobile, tablet, and desktop. Concerns were raised about Microsoft’s licensing practices potentially locking customers into its services and its AI investments possibly sidestepping regulatory oversight.

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Another study, released by the Open Source Development Labs, claimed that the Microsoft studies were “simply outdated and one-sided” and their survey concluded that the TCO of Linux was lower due to Linux administrators managing more servers on average and other reasons. As such, it needs subsidiaries present in whatever national markets it chooses to harvest. In November 2018, the company won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring augmented reality (AR) headset technology into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers. Its total market value was over $410B—with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000. On July 20, 2012, Microsoft posted its first quarterly loss ever, despite earning record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year, with a net loss of $492 million due to a writedown related to the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 2007.

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Microsoft is scheduled to report its latest quarterly results after the market closes on Wednesday, with traders anticipating a big move in the tech giant’s stock following the results. The Maia 200 chip, which is being produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is making its way to Microsoft data centers in Iowa, with deployments headed to the Phoenix area next. The organization requested that European data protection authorities investigate whether this data processing complies with EU law. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. On August 20, 20 Microsoft employees and their allies were arrested after refusing to disperse from a protest on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus.

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The Kinect, a motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller, first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the Xbox One video game console. In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for police surveillance in New York City. The Surface was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company’s history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings together your favorite apps and Copilot in one intuitive platform. Anyone in your organization can quickly create documents, presentations, and worksheets within a single, unified app experience. You can send GIFs, photos, videos, documents, emojis, and more. You can do almost everything on WhatsApp Web that you can from your smartphone. Finally, point the iPhone camera at the QR code. In a second, the QR code will be scanned, and you’ll be logged in to WhatsApp Web.
Your files and memories are secure in the cloud with 5GB of storage for free and 1TB with a paid Microsoft 365 subscription. Quickly design anything for you and your family—birthday cards, school flyers, budgets, social posts, videos, and more—no graphic design experience needed. Find your favorite apps, your files, and your inspiration with the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on the web.
With Status you can share text, photos, video, and GIF updates that disappear after 24 hours. Your calls work across devices, even on slower connections, using your phone or tablet’s Internet service.Group chats to keep you in contactStay close to friends and family through end-to-end encrypted group chats and calls. “We’re actively monitoring performance and making targeted adjustments to further improve stability and availability, while continuing recovery actions to ensure a reliable service experience.”

ET said that the company has restored affected https://www.kinghills.casino/ infrastructure and was directing traffic to other infrastructure to recover. ET, Microsoft said that it had found that “a portion of service infrastructure in North America” was not handling traffic correctly and that it was trying to fix the problem. ET, the company said in an X post that it was investigating an issue affecting Outlook. Outlook represents a core part of Microsoft 365 productivity software bundles.
Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance. With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, so other companies had to reverse engineer it for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, licensed from AT&T Corporation a year before, called Xenix, but it was MS-DOS that solidified the company’s dominance.
As of January 2011,update it has no products that are completely free from PVC and BFRs.needs update Microsoft’s timeline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products was 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear. In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase. Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression “eating your own dog food” is used to describe the policy of using pre-release and beta versions of products inside Microsoft to test them in “real-world” situations. Helpful people can be elected by peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits.
Once the website is opened, you’ll have a QR code on the side of the website. The whole process is the same as using WhatsApp Web on a desktop. Once the QR code is scanned successfully, your WhatsApp account will instantly be logged into the web version on your PC. This is needed to link your phone with WhatsApp Web. WhatsApp Web is a convenient way to use WhatsApp on your computer, offering a seamless experience similar to your smartphone. It provides a convenient way to stay connected, especially when the phone isn’t easily accessible.