While Microsoft largely failed to participate in the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, some of the key technologies in which the company had invested to enter the Internet market started to pay off by the mid-90s. The company also released the Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, which had built-in support for internet applications. In November 1996, Microsoft Office 97 was released, which is the first version to include Office Assistant. Windows CE 2.0, the handheld version of Windows, was released this year, including a host of bug fixes and new features designed to make it more appealing to corporate customers. (Earlier magazine on-disk distributions included Robert Uiterwyk’s BASIC in the May 1977 issue of Information Age.) However, Xenix was never sold to end users directly although it was licensed to many software OEMs for resale.

1994: Windows and Office

In May 2016, the company announced it will lay off 1,850 workers, taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million (~$1.21 billion in 2024). During the previous PickWin casino summer of 2015 the company wrote down $7.6 billion (~$9.8 billion in 2024) related to its mobile-phone business and fired 7,800 employees from those operations. On June 26, 2009, Microsoft started taking pre-orders at a discounted price for Windows 7 which was launched on October 22, 2009. Microsoft entered the multibillion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo, with the release of the Xbox. Microsoft launched their second console, the Xbox 360, in 2005 – which was more successful than the original. The console was also outsold by the Wii, which introduced gesture control and opened up a new market for video games.

• The documents also alluded to legal and other actions against Linux as well as other open source software.

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• In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp.

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• Microsoft also marketed through an Apple dealer in West Palm Beach, Florida two products for the Radio-Shack TRS-80.

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• On October 1, Microsoft announced its intention to launch a news operation, part of a new-look MSN, at the time of the Windows 8 launch that was later in the month.
• Microsoft Works would later be sold with other Microsoft products including Microsoft Word and Microsoft Bookshelf, a reference collection introduced in 1987 that was the company’s first CD-ROM product.

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• On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies’ progress against OKRs.

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2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Stores

In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the UEFI core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. December also saw the company rebuilding Microsoft Edge as a Chromium-based browser; it was publicly released on January 15, 2020. In guise of competing with other Internet Companies such as the search service Google, in 2005 Microsoft announced a new version of its MSN search service.

• In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the UEFI core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products.

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• On July 31, 2012, Microsoft launched the Outlook.com webmail service beta to compete with Gmail.

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• On July 29, 2015, Microsoft released the next version of the Windows operating system, Windows 10.
• On October 8, 2017, Joe Belfiore announced that work on Windows 10 Mobile was drawing to a close due to lack of market penetration and resultant lack of interest from app developers.

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• While Microsoft largely failed to participate in the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, some of the key technologies in which the company had invested to enter the Internet market started to pay off by the mid-90s.

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• In an internal memo to Microsoft employees on May 16, 1991, Bill Gates announced that the OS/2 partnership was over, and that Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the Windows NT kernel.

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2020: Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Microsoft Edge and HoloLens

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• Later, in 2006, the company launched Microsoft adCenter, a service that offers pay per click advertisements, in an effort to further develop their search marketing revenue.

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• On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of their first Interactive whiteboard, Microsoft Surface Hub (part of the Surface family).

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• On August 24, 1995, it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL.

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• In an attempt to extend its reach in the consumer market, the company acquired WebTV, which enabled consumers to access the Web from their televisions.

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• The first operating system publicly released by the company was a variant of Unix announced on August 25, 1980.

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• December also saw the company rebuilding Microsoft Edge as a Chromium-based browser; it was publicly released on January 15, 2020.

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On February 17, Microsoft released an update to its business line of software in Windows 2000. Microsoft launched its Indian headquarters as well, which would eventually become the company’s second largest after its U.S. headquarters. Finally, a great deal of controversy took place when a set of internal memos from the company were leaked on the Internet.

2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox

A developer preview was released on September 13, and was replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012. On July 31, 2012, Microsoft launched the Outlook.com webmail service beta to compete with Gmail. Microsoft released Windows XP and Office XP in 2001, a version that aimed to encompass the features of both its business and home product lines.