MICROSOFT CORPORATION

leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. The company also publishes books and multimedia titles, offers electronic mail services, distributes programming via the Internet, and manufactures computer pointing devices. It has sales offices throughout the world but does virtually all of its research and development at its corporate headquarters in Redmond, Wash., U.S. In 1975 William H. Gates and Paul G. Allen, two boyhood friends from Seattle, converted BASIC, a popular mainframe programming language, for use on an early personal computer (PC), the Altair. Shortly afterward Gates and Allen founded Microsoft, deriving the name from the words microcomputer and software. During the next few years they refined BASIC and developed other programming languages. In 1980 International Business Machines (IBM) asked Microsoft to produce the essential software, or operating system for its first personal computer, the IBM PC. Microsoft purchased an operating system from another company, modified it, and renamed it MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System). MS-DOS was released with the IBM PC in 1981. Thereafter, most manufacturers of personal computers licensed MS-DOS as their operating system, generating vast revenues for Microsoft; by the early 1990s it had sold more than 100 million copies of the program and defeated rival operating systems such as CP/M, which it displaced in the early 1980s, and later OS/2. Microsoft deepened its position in operating systems with its Windows graphical command program, whose third version, released in 1990, gained a wide following. By 1993, Windows 3.0 and its subsequent versions were selling at a rate of one million copies per month, and nearly 90 percent of the world's PCs ran on a Microsoft operating system. In 1995, the company released Windows 95, which for the first time fully integrated MS-DOS with Windows and effectively matched in ease of use Apple Computer's Macintosh OS. It also became the leader in productivity software such as word-processing and spreadsheet programs, outdistancing long-time rivals Lotus and WordPerfect in the process As a result, by the mid-1990s Microsoft, which became a publicly owned corporation in 1986, had become one of the most powerful and profitable companies in American history. It consistently earned profits of 25 cents on every sales dollar, an astonishing record; net income topped $2.1 billion in the company's fiscal year ending June 30, 1996. However, its rapid growth in a fiercely competitive and fast-changing industry spawned resentment and jealousy among rivals, some of whom complained that the company's practices violated U.S. laws against unfair competition. Microsoft and its defenders countered that, far from stifling competition and technical innovation, its rise had encouraged both and that its software had consistently become less expensive and more useful. A U.S. Justice Department investigation concluded in 1994 with a settlement in which Microsoft changed some sales practices that the government contended enabled the company to unfairly discourage OS customers from trying alternative programs. The following year, the Justice Department successfully challenged Microsoft's proposed purchase of Intuit, the leading maker of financial software for the PC. Partly because of its stunning success in PC software, Microsoft was slow to realize the commercial possibilities of network systems and the Internet. In 1993 it released Windows NT, a landmark program that tied disparate PCs together and offered improved reliability and network security. Sales were initially disappointing, but by 1996 Windows NT was hailed as the likely standard for PC networking, challenging Novell's NetWare. Microsoft did not move into Internet software until a new venture, Netscape, had captured the emerging market for Web browsers, a new class of programs that simplified the once-arcane process of navigating the World Wide Web. In a violent change of course, Microsoft began pursuing Netscape with imitative offerings, which in less than a year achieved sufficient acceptance to challenge Netscape's continued dominance of the Web. It dramatically expanded its electronic publishing division, created in 1985 and already notable for the success of its multimedia encyclopaedia, Encarta. It also entered the information services and entertainment industries with a wide range of products and services, most notably the Microsoft Network and MSNBC (a joint venture with the National Broadcasting Company, a major American television network). Gregg Pascal Zachary