Some Interesting Facts of Microsoft Company

Paul Allen and Bill Gates were childhood friends, who first met in 1969 and both specialize in computer programming. Both friends always dreamed of building a business using skills and a passion for computers. Paul Allen later pursued a degree in Computer Science and Bill Gates went on to study at Harvard but both dropped out of school to pursue their dreams of making commercial software by creating Microsoft, right now one of the largest Tech Giants in the industry. Here we bring to you some of the most interesting facts related to the Tech Giant 

Paul Allen and Bill Gates

Paul Allen and Bill Gates had founded another company before Microsoft even existed. It was called Traf-O-Data. They took raw data from traffic counters and made traffic reports for traffic Engineers. Though the company saw the modest success they eventually went out of business as the State of Washington now started offering Traffic processing services for free thus their services were no longer required. But this company was a birthstone for Microsoft as it provided them the experience to write Altair BASIC for MITS which was their first milestone Microsoft's Success. 

MS-DOS was not Microsoft's first entry into the market of operating systems but a UNIX based operating system called Xenix. Since UNIX's The developer was a part of Bell Labs he could not sell UNIX but instead licensed it to vendors. Even though Microsoft Licensed UNIX it did not get rights for the name but instead called it XENIX. Microsoft even dreamt it to use it on future Personal Computers for Multi-Tasking once they became a bit more powerful. But after the Bells Corporation Broke up AT&T; started selling another variant of UNIX themselves. Microsoft feared it would not be able to compete with the original makers of UNIX decided to focus on DOS. Since the Xenix team was reassigned to work for DOS, MS-DOS had shared many features of Xenix including a multi-user system. 

Xenix

Like many other multinational software giants, Microsoft has its own set of "Traditions" for its employees. One of them consisting of giving their employees M&Ms; on their employment anniversary. The funniest thing is that you are awarded packets of M&Ms; in pounds based on the number of work years completed. Imagine Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft getting 24 pounds of M&Ms; this year after he completes 24 years at Microsoft. He is going to need a sweet tooth to finish all those M&Ms.; 

Microsoft Windows live search

As Google took its lead in web Search, Microsoft decided to rebrand their Windows live search to compete against Google. They wanted to go for a catchy name to compete with the word google. The word "Bang" was decided. But then a new trend was observed. Google started to become an English synonym for search and people widely began saying "Google it!". Microsoft then figured out "Bang it!" would not be considered an appropriate phrase and then decided upon the name Bing. Bing was also called to be a recursive acronym for "BING is not Google". However, this claim was denied by Microsoft and they had no intention for it. As of March 2016, Bing has about 21% of the search market only behind Google with a share of 63% and is a multibillion profit source for Microsoft. 

Bing

When Google bought the domain abc.xyz for making a website to their to be founded Parent Company called Alphabet Inc. The world quickly saw the domain abc.wtf being registered and was redirected to Bing. Soon abc.wtf went viral and media speculated it was an aggressive marketing strategy from Microsoft and it went Viral even though there was no solid evidence because the domain was privately registered. If you register a domain privately which comes with a premium cost your personal info is not shown by the Whois database. But due to the fact the domain was redirected with an A record, Microsoft was seen as the Culprit. Moreover, they were infamously known for their SCROOGLE campaign against google. But later Ari Weinstein claimed the ownership of the domain who is a researcher at Google Deep-mind on Quora. 

Microsoft is one of the top 10 Patent holders in the world and in the top 5 in the United States of America. Microsoft holds about 40,000 patents and gets around 3000 patents every year. Microsoft also awards its employees for earning a Patent.  Apple does not even come close to the number of patents held by Microsoft. So when next time Apple fanboys start telling you "Apple is the innovator of the future" just blindly tell them this to get them demolished. 

MS Patent Cube

Apple was known to have made the revolutionary device the iPad. People widely believe the people at Apple were the first people to come up with the revolutionary device that people thought would replace laptops and Desktops. But the tablet is quite an old concept. Microsoft had created the first tablet commercially made in large numbers. The Tablet ran Windows 2000 and XP. I guess you didn't know Windows XP and 2000 supports touch. The tablet was not manufactured by Microsoft by themselves but was made Lenovo produced the tablet in 2000 and other partners like Fujitsu and Acer made the XP tablet in 2002 

Microsoft Tablet

When Microsoft released a graphical extension of MS-DOS Bill gates wanted to name it to interface Manager. But the marketing team disapproved of its name and convinced him to rename it to "Windows". This was the birth of Windows 1.0. Bill gates then decided to keep "Interface Manager" as a codename for Windows 1.0. This tradition has kept on going until even now. The codename for Windows 10 was called "Threshold"

An avatar is supposed to be a pictorial online representation of yourself. But all web services, Websites, and Web apps provide a default Avatar. Usually a picture of the male or Female face outline. One of the versions of Microsoft's Email Client, outlook 2010 had a peculiar male default avatar. It was actually the outline of the photo Bill Gates taken by the authorities when he was arrested in 1997 for over speeding and driving without a license. Think about it, Bill is staring at you whenever you use Outlook 2010. 

Windows Piracy

Big Companies are infamously known for their aggressiveness towards Trade Mark infringement but Microsoft Went too far. A Canadian High School Student started a part-time web design business and call it Mike Rowe Soft. He then registered the domain MikeRoweSoft.com, when pronounced it sounded like Microsoft. So Microsoft sued Mike Rowe for Trade Mark Infringement. This legal battle had caused worldwide media speculation with mixed views. After quite a battle Mike Rowe and Microsoft had later agreed to an out court settlement that gave Microsoft access to his domain in return for providing him with free Microsoft Products Like the Xbox.