Throughout these five decades it has only had three global CEOs: Bill Gates himself, Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella, in an industry accustomed to the constant dance of names. But in that time it has acquired and merged with hundreds of companies, including Hotmail, Nokia’s mobile devices division, and more recently Skype, GitHub, Linkedin and Activision Blizzard, the latter, related to gaming, being the most expensive at $68.7 billion.
But let’s look back to some of the earliest milestones in the development of the organization. In 1980, Gates and Allen signed an agreement to provide an operating system for IBM’s first personal computer. After presenting its MS-DOS PC in 1981, Windows came along in 1985 and, by the end of the decade, it was already the most recognized software brand on the planet. The first version of Microsoft Office arrived around that time, the productivity suite that today, under the Microsoft 365 brand, is used by more than 1.5 billion people.
One of the first images of the Microsoft team, TAKEN shortly after its founding. In the bottom row are Bill Gates (left) and Paul Allen (right).
Microsoft
During the 1990s, Bill Gates’ vision of the potential of the World Wide Web led to the integration of the company’s products and services into the network and the creation of one of the most famous browsers in the digital world, Internet Explorer. Gates has become one of the leading gurus of the computer industry and his thinking has permeated the world through numerous lectures, public appearances and published books.
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