By AFP
March 30, 2025

Bill Gates (C) and Paul Allen (L), pictured here at a Portland Trailblazers basketball game in May 2000, founded Microsoft in 1975 with a mission to put computers in every home and office - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP CHIP SOMODEVILLA

Bill Gates (C) and Paul Allen (L), pictured here at a Portland Trailblazers basketball game in May 2000, founded Microsoft in 1975 with a mission to put computers in every home and office - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP CHIP SOMODEVILLA
Julie JAMMOT
Microsoft has been at the heart of computing for half a century, becoming a tech stalwart almost taken for granted as lifestyles embraced the internet.
As the company, founded with a vision of putting computers in every home and office, celebrates its 50th anniversary on Friday, it is looking to boost its fortunes by being a leader in the fast-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI).
“From a storytelling standpoint, they’ve been a boring company and a boring stock,” eMarketer analyst Jeremy Goldman said of the Richmond, Washington-based behemoth.
“It’s funny because they have a $2.9 trillion market cap, and that is huge,” he continued, referring to Microsoft’s value based on its share price.
The only company with a higher market cap is iPhone maker Apple.
Cloud computing is fueling Microsoft’s revenue with the help of its ubiquitous Office software, now hosted online and no longer released in boxes of floppy disks or CDs.
“It’s not a very sexy infrastructure, but it’s a very valuable one,” Goldman said of Microsoft’s data centers and software at the foundation of its cloud-computing platform.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are Microsoft’s cloud-computing rivals.
– ‘Micro-Soft’ –
Clouds were the stuff of weather forecasts rather than computing when Bill Gates and childhood friend Paul Allen founded what was first called “Micro-Soft” in 1975.
They launched the MS-DOS operating system that became known as “Windows” and went on to run most of the world’s computers.
Microsoft Office programs including Word, Excel and PowerPoint became standard business tools, even fending off free Google Docs software.
“Microsoft had a lot of businesses that were weaker and challenged — the perfect example is Office,” Goldman said.
“That Office is still such a meaningful business for them says something about the way they were able to innovate.”
Current chief executive Satya Nadella championed a Microsoft shift to making its software available on just about any device as subscription services hosted in the cloud.

Image: © AFP JULIEN DE ROSA
The move likely saved Microsoft from seeing free services like Google Docs reduce their market share to zero, the analyst said.
– ‘Achilles heel’ –
Microsoft remains in the shadow of other US tech giants when it comes to offerings such as social networks, smartphones and the AI-infused digital assistants that have become woven into people’s lives, but it is not for lack of effort.
Microsoft introduced Xbox video game consoles in 2001, steadily building up its stable of studios, making the blockbuster buy of Activision Blizzard two years ago and adding an online subscription service for players.
And despite its launch of the Bing search engine in 2009, Google still dominates that market.
Microsoft in 2016 bought career-focused social network LinkedIn, which has seen steady growth. But it still lacks the reach of Meta’s Facebook or Instagram, or the influence of Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).
Microsoft is among those in the running to buy TikTok, which faces a ban in the United States if not sold by China-based ByteDance.
While Apple and Google have excelled at making it easy or even fun for users to engage with products, that has been an “Achilles heel” for Microsoft, according to Goldman.
“It’s never been a strong suit of theirs,” the analyst said.
– Mobile miss –
Known for a focus on sales rather than innovation, Steve Ballmer, who followed Gates as chief of Microsoft from 2000 to 2013, has been faulted for missing the shift to smartphones and other mobile computing devices.
His successor, Nadella, took over with a vow to make Microsoft a “mobile-first, cloud-first” company and Microsoft has since invested heavily in AI, taking a stake in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and building the technology into offerings including Bing, though to little avail.
– Behind in AI? –
Independent analyst Jack Gold believes that despite those investments and efforts, Microsoft lags in AI because it lacks its own chips or foundation model.
“They are not as advanced in that as AWS and Google, so they’re still playing a little bit of catchup in that space,” Gold said of Microsoft.
Google Cloud’s revenue growth is on pace to overtake Microsoft’s Azure for second place in the market in two years, the analyst said.
Four men loom large in Microsoft history
By AFP
March 30, 2025

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. — © AFP Daniel ROLAND
Glenn CHAPMAN
Microsoft was shaped by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella over the course of the last half-century in the male-dominated tech world.
Friends since childhood in Seattle, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in 1975 with a stated goal of putting a computer in every office and home.
– Gates –
Born William Henry Gates III in 1955 in Seattle, he began writing software programs while a 13-year-old schoolboy.
Gates dropped out of Harvard in his junior year to start Microsoft with Allen.
The childhood friends created MS-DOS operating system, since renamed Windows, which went on to dominate office work.
Gates built a reputation as a formidable and sometimes ruthless leader.
Critics argue he unfairly wielded Microsoft’s clout in the market, and the US pressed a winning antitrust case against the company in the late 1990s.
In 2000, Gates ceded the CEO job to Ballmer, whom he befriended while the two were students at Harvard.
Gates chose to devote himself to a charitable foundation he established with his then-wife, Melinda.
He resigned from Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020 — shortly after the firm acknowledged the existence of an “intimate” relationship with an employee in the past.
The following year, the couple divorced. Melinda Gates faulted him for his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was found guilty of sexually exploiting under-age girls.
His support of Covid-19 vaccine campaigns and agriculture programs that focus on climate change and women made Gates a favorite target of conspiracy theorists.
Baseless accusations aimed at Gates include him putting tracking chips in vaccines.
– Allen –
Paul Allen, born in 1953 in Seattle, was a schoolmate of Gates.
Allen was 10 when he started a science club at home, and would later bond with young Gates over computers.
“Microsoft would never have happened without Paul,” Gates wrote in tribute to Allen, who died of cancer complications in 2018.
Gates told of Allen showing him a magazine featuring a computer running on a new chip, and warning that a tech revolution was happening without them.
Allen is credited with combining “microcomputer” and “software” to come up with “Micro-Soft”.
He left Microsoft in 1983, but remained a board member until 2000. He went on to accuse Gates and Ballmer of scheming to “rip him off” by getting hold of his shares while he battled cancer.
– Ballmer –
Ballmer was seen as a devoted salesman who ramped up Microsoft revenue while neglecting innovation.
A Michigan native with a talent for mathematics, he graduated from Harvard.
Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and was best man at the 1994 wedding of Bill and Melinda Gates.
Ballmer, now 69, succeeded Gates as chief executive in 2000.
His enthusiastic gestures, awkward dance moves, and voice-straining shouts made him the stuff of internet memes and company lore.
Ballmer oversaw the launch of Xbox video game consoles, Surface tablets, and Bing online search engine. Microsoft bought Skype and Nokia’s mobile phone division on Ballmer’s watch.
During his tenure, Microsoft was seen as clinging to PCs while lifestyles raced toward mobile devices and cloud-based software.
His product failures include Zune digital music players, Kin mobile phones, and a Vista version of Windows.
– Nadella –
Nadella took over as chief executive in early 2014 and says he learned leadership skills playing cricket as a boy growing up in India.
Nadella, who will turn 58 in August, was hired in 1992 while studying at the University of Chicago.
Early in his academic career, a drive to build things led him to pursue computer science, a focus not available during his engineering studies at Mangalore University.
Nadella’s Microsoft bio shows stints in research, business, server and online services units.
For relaxation, he turns to poetry, which he likened to complex data compressed to express rich ideas in few words.
Nadella held firm that for Microsoft to succeed, it needed to adapt to a “cloud-first, mobile-first world”.
Soon after becoming chief, he ordered the biggest reorganization in Microsoft’s history.
He is credited with guiding Microsoft from a fading packaged software business to the booming market for cloud services.
Microsoft has been pumping billions of dollars into AI, investing in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and infusing the technology across its products.
In a rare stumble, Nadella triggered an uproar his first year as chief by suggesting during an on-stage discussion that working women should trust “karma” when it comes to securing pay raises.
Microsoft’s acquisitions under Nadella include Sweden-based Mojang, maker of the popular video game Minecraft; social network LinkedIn, and the GitHub online platform catering to software developers.
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