Intelligence Slideshow:
45 Fast Facts About Microsoft

• 1. Founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, teen hackers, once cracked a Seattle company’s security system.
• 2. The first company founded by Gates and Allen, Traf-O-Data, analyzed traffic data.
• 3. More traffic data: In 1977, Bill Gates was arrested in New Mexico for running a red light and driving without a license.
• 4. “I didn't just drop out [of Harvard],” Gates told Forbes. ''I went to found Microsoft.''
• 5. Microsoft was founded in New Mexico in 1975, moved to Bellevue in 1979, and settled in Redmond in 1986.
• 6. Microsoft originally started as Micro-soft. The hyphen was removed in 1976.
• 7. Steve Ballmer finished Harvard, but dropped out of Stanford grad school to become Microsoft’s 24th employee.
• 8. First customer: Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems bought Altair BASIC, written by Allen and Gates while Gates was in college.
• 9. Total revenue in its first year: $16,000. Four years later, the company was pulling in $1 million.
• 10. $50,000 in 1981 bought the Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS). Renamed MS DOS, it was licensed to IBM for the first PC.
• 11. Gates once claimed Microsoft would never sell a 32-bit operating system. Windows 7’s most popular versions are 64-bit operating systems.
• 12. Vista’s delayed delivery was nothing new. Windows 1.0’s 1985 release was late by two years.
• 13. At least two other PC-based GUI, from VsiCorp and Digital Research, Inc., beat Windows to market.
• 14. Before the marketing people got hold of it, Windows was going to be called “Interface Manager.”
• 15. WinVer 1.4, the first virus to infect Windows, was unleashed in 1992.
• 16. Microsoft has been manufacturing hardware since 1983, when it introduced the Microsoft Mouse 1.0.
• 17. Apple tried to sue Microsoft out of existence in 1985 and 1988 for “stealing” drop-down menus, tiled windows, and mouse devices.
• 18. Part of Microsoft’s winning defense: many of its ideas were developed by Xerox and predated the Mac.
• 19. In 2004, former Windows guru Jim Allchin wrote, “We lost our way” while developing what would eventually become Vista.
• 20. Allchin also wrote: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.”
• 21. Microsoft launched its first web site in 1993 for support resources, previously available on a CompuServe forum.
• 22. Paul Allen retired from Microsoft in 1983 as a result of his battle with Hodgkin’s disease.
• 23. Through his company, Vulcan, Inc., Allen has invested heavily in technology research, philanthropy, and even the search for extraterrestrial life.
• 24. Allen owns the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, and the Seattle Sounders FC professional soccer franchise.
• 25. Microsoft’s stock went public at $21 a share in 1986. Dividends have been paid since 2003.
• 26. Bill Gates became a billionaire at the age of 31, just a year after the IPO.
• 27. Microsoft’s stock has split nine times since the company went public in 1986.
• 28. In 1999, Gates became the first American with $100 billion in assets.
• 29. Steve Ballmer was the first ever person who was not a company founder to become a billionaire off of stock options.
• 30. In April of 2009, Microsoft reported its first loss in 23 years.
• 31. Douglas Coupland’s novel, Microserfs, documents tech culture in the pre-Web days.
• 32. Microsoft has acquired nearly 150 companies in its 34-year history.
• 33. Microsoft’s first acquisition was Forethought, the company that designed what would become PowerPoint, in 1987.
• 34. Microsoft’s largest acquisition was in 2007, when it snatched up the digital marketing firm aQuantive for $6.3 billion.
• 35. Microsoft’s headcount has nearly tripled since 1999.
• 36. Microsoft’s workforce is a little over 75% male.
• 37. Full-timers have called temps “dash trash” for the dash that precedes the name in their assigned Microsoft e-mail address.
• 38. Microsoft’s practice of hiring “permatemps” shaped IRS policy; in 1996, payroll taxes were increased for longtime temps.
• 39. Microsoft’s real estate portfolio totals over 14 million square feet, most of it in the Puget Sound area.
• 40. Bill Gates is a knight (sans shining armor). The queen of England bestowed him with an honorary knighthood in 2005.
• 41. Started in 1991, Microsoft Research has grown to employ 850 researchers, with 55 areas of study at its labs worldwide.
• 42. Microsoft’s Accessible Technology Group makes computers easier to use for people with disabilities.
• 43. Microsoft’s legal department is currently defending more than 50 patent infringement cases—10 of them go to trial next year.
• 44. Microsoft spends nearly half of its legal budget on patent cases; this year it announced its 10,000th patent.
• 45. The $2.8 billion in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year totaled more than the GDP of 25 different countries worldwide.