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. The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant. In June 2022, Microsoft published the report on Russian cyber attacks and concluded that state-backed Russian hackers "have engaged in "strategic espionage" against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups" in 42 countries supporting Kyiv. Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide). It is estimated to encompass over 8 million ft2 (750,000 m2) of office space and 30,000–40,000 employees.
In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company's war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune ρανσαζ μαλλιων series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices, and the company's software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.
In April 2016, the company sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company's and customers' rights. Following media reports about PRISM, NSA's massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. Microsoft provides information about reported bugs in its software to intelligence agencies of the United States government, prior to the public release of the fix.
2014: Windows 8/8.1, Xbox One, Outlook.com, and Surface devices
Bill Gates claims the cap on H1B visas makes it difficult to hire employees for the company, stating "I'd certainly get rid of the H1B cap" in 2005. Microsoft is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H-1B visas, which allows companies in the U.S. to employ certain foreign workers. 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. Microsoft noted in a blog post that the attack might have been prevented if the accounts in question had enabled multi-factor authentication, a defensive measure which is widely recommended in the industry, including by Microsoft itself. The group, accessed "a very small percentage" of Microsoft corporate email accounts, which also included members of its senior leadership team and employees in its cybersecurity and legal teams.
However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI's CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI's employees and investors on its board. The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. The announcement came a day after hosting a Sting concert for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos, Switzerland. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off 10,000 employees. Microsoft also named Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company's portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge Legacy browser project in favor of the "New Edge" browser project, featuring a Chromium based backend.
Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices, including surveillance of employees, "Velvet Sweatshop" practices, tax manipulation, and antitrust violations. Amid the layoffs, Microsoft also closed its office in Pakistan and laid off its employees there as part of its move toward a software-as-a-service and AI operating model. In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company's mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies' progress against OKRs, planning to incorporate it into its Viva family of employee experience products. The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems. This inquiry was part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to enforce guidelines on the power of major tech companies.
In March 2026, Microsoft-controlled discussion forums banned the nickname Microslop, used to express pushback against Microsoft's Copilot-based and GenAI efforts. In mid-2025, Microsoft's Russian division, Microsoft Rus LLC, filed for bankruptcy after President Vladimir Putin stated that foreign services providers should be throttled in Russia to make way for domestic software. The outage was traced back to a flawed update of CrowdStrike's cybersecurity software, which resulted in Microsoft systems crashing and causing disruptions across various sectors. On July 19, a global IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting businesses, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide. Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro.
- This inquiry was part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to enforce guidelines on the power of major tech companies.
- In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company's entire workforce.
- Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems and the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, which most notably include the Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet editor, and PowerPoint presentation program.
- Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak.
To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of "holiday stores" across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012. The Surface was unveiled in June 2012, becoming the first computer in the company's history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation's logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. 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.