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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 April 2016, the company sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in ο φάροσ – δραπετσώνα φωτογραφίεσ 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.

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Get must-have apps to enhance your gaming experience with Twitch, Nitrado, Air Server, and Dolby Atmos. Stream your favorite movies and content from Netflix, Disney+, Funimation, and YouTube. Get the latest releases, blockbuster exclusives, season passes, add-on content, indie games and more—all at great prices. The probe scrutinized Microsoft's bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI. The European Commission issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft's practice since 2019 gave Teams an unfair market advantage and limited interoperability with competing software.

In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio. Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network. 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 has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system and office software suite markets since the 1990s. A Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies, and one of the most valuable brands globally. The company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows and has since expanded into areas such as Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and more.

Corporate affairs

In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming. If you already have a Microsoft 365 subscription (or a work or school license), sign in to download and install Microsoft 365 apps. With Copilot, you get AI assistance built into the Microsoft 365 apps. Access your work with a mobile experience designed for flexibility.

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. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft.

If you want to download the Microsoft 365 desktop apps, sign in to install

The layoffs primarily affected Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected. 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. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to government bonds. The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. 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 9 March 2026, Microsoft unveiled the Copilot Cowork tool, which is based on Claude Cowork, tapping into the growing demand for autonomous agents.

• 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).
• The cuts affected multiple divisions, including Xbox, with 830 positions eliminated at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.
• Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company.

In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company's entire workforce. Microsoft is one of only two U.S.-based companies that have a prime credit rating of AAA. In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company's gaming sales.

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. Microsoft stated that the underlying cause had been fixed but acknowledged ongoing residual impacts on some Microsoft 365 apps and services. 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.