What is Microsoft
Microsoft is an American technology company founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, initially to sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 microcomputer, and headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Its official page states the mission “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
Business and main products
- Operating systems: the Windows family of PC operating systems; Windows 1.0 shipped on November 20, 1985 (see the Windows entry).
- Productivity and collaboration: Microsoft 365 (the Office suite launched in 1990 with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), Teams, Outlook, OneDrive.
- Cloud: Azure, launched on October 27, 2008.
- AI: Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant line, described in official navigation as “your everyday AI companion”; Microsoft also invested in OpenAI (announced January 23, 2023).
- Devices and gaming: Surface hardware, the Xbox console line (first released in 2001), and the Game Pass subscription.
- Developer and professional services: Visual Studio and other tools; GitHub was acquired for $7.5 billion on June 4, 2018, and LinkedIn was acquired in 2016.
Discussion in the show
In Weekly #001’s chapter “Hugging Face 的价值，以及英伟达为何要为产业托底” (The value of Hugging Face, and why NVIDIA underwrites the industry), while discussing companies building their own models, Yang Pan says in the Chinese transcript: “It seems every vendor is building its own. In the future everyone will. Claude is doing it, and Microsoft, Meta, Z.ai — reportedly too.” — the “reportedly” marks it as secondhand.
In the same episode’s chapter on whether the AI app market is recovering, Orange lists GPT, AWS, and Microsoft as parties that can offer 20–25 percent API discounts, leaving no margin for resellers, in the Chinese transcript. These are host opinions. See the episode 001 chapter and another episode 001 chapter; English transcript chapters are not available.
Frequently asked questions
What is Microsoft’s official website?
The corporate site is microsoft.com, with the company overview at microsoft.com/en-us/about.
What country is Microsoft from?
Microsoft is an American company founded on April 4, 1975, headquartered in Redmond, Washington. See Wikipedia.
What are Microsoft’s main products?
The Windows operating system, the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, the Azure cloud platform, the Copilot AI assistant, Surface devices, the Xbox gaming business, and developer and professional products such as GitHub, LinkedIn, and Visual Studio. The product navigation on the official About page lists them.
What is the relationship between Microsoft and Windows?
Windows is Microsoft’s family of PC operating systems, first released in 1985. Product-level details are in the Windows entry.