MICROSOFT By: Joe McBride Briarcliffe College Microsoft Corporation, leading American computer software company. Microsoft develops and sells a wide variety of computer software products in more than fifty countries. Microsoft's Windows operating systems for personal computers are the most widely use operating systems in the world. Microsoft had revenues of $14.4 billion for the fiscal year ending June 1998, and employs more than 27,000 people in 60 countries. Microsoft has it's headquaters in Redmond Washington. Microsoft's other well known products include, Word, a word processor; Excel, a spreadsheet program; Access, a database program; and PowerPoint, a program used for making business presentations. These products are sold separately from Windows as a part of Microsoft Office. Microsoft also makes Back Office, an integrated set of server products for businesses. Microsoft's Internet Explorer allows users to browse the World Wide Web. Among Microsoft's other products are reference applications; games; finical software; programming languages for software developers (eg; Visual Basic) ; input devices, such as pointing devices and keyboards; and computer related books. Microsoft operates The Microsoft Network (MSN), a collection of news, travel, financial, entertainment, and information Web sites. Microsoft and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) jointly operate MSNBC, a twenty four hour news, talk, and information cable television channel and companion Web site. Microsoft was founded in 1975 by William H. Gates III and Paul Allen. The pair had teamed up in high school via their hobby of programming on the original PDP-10 computer from the Digital Equipment Corporation. In 1975 Popular Electronics magazine featured a cover story ab...
