Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary. The company was founded on April 4, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and has become one of the most important technological companies of all time, thanks to the development of products such as Microsoft Office and MS-DOS, which revolutionized both the business world and bringing technology closer to millions of homes worldwide.
Today it is still in full form, mainly marketing software but also hardware (from computer computers such as Xbox), innovating and trying to lead the field of artificial intelligence with its own generational chatbot, Copilot, one of the main alternatives to Chatgpt.
To celebrate your birthday, in this article you can review some of the best products and services that this company has contributed to the history of technological development that, by the way, acquired the Professional Social Network LinkedIn in 2016.
Main milestones in Microsoft’s history
Those are some of the main innovations that Microsoft has made throughout its history. There are so many, which have been selected the best 20 in the opinion of the Trecebits writing.
-Altair Basic: Altair Basic is known for being the first Microsoft product, launched in 1975. It is basically an interpreter for the Basic programming language that could be executed in the mythical Altair computer 8800. Its creation gave rise to all the products developed later under the name of Microsoft Basic.
-Microsoft Basic: After the success of Altair Basic, the BASIC programming language became the star product of Microsoft, thanks to the fact that it reduced the complexity of most of the other programming languages that existed at the time. It was used in most computers that were marketed in the 70s and 80s of the last century.
-MS-DOS: MS-DOS was one of the great operating systems based on text of the 80s. The fact that all IBM computers began using it contributed to its popularization. It was a primary basis for the first Windows versions until it was finally replaced by what is now known as CMD.
-Microsoft Windows 95: Windows 95, without a doubt, was one of the most revolutionary products for Microsoft in the 90s already throughout its history. This version of Windows introduced the start menu, file explorer, folders such as “my documents” or recycling bin, innovations that until today are still used daily.
In addition, it was accompanied by a millionaire marketing campaign in which the Rolling Stones premiered the theme “Start Me Up”. Even the cast of the famous “Friends” series participated in several advertising spot for the launch of this new Windows.
-Inversion in Apple: In 1997, Microsoft became part of Apple’s history by helping this company out of a complicated era in which it almost went to ruin. Microsoft supported the company, led again by Steve Jobs, with an investment of 150 million dollars.
After this investment and the involvement of Microsoft in the future of the Bite apple company, it was announced that several products such as Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office would be available for Apple systems.
-Microsoft Office 2007: The launch of Office 2007 was a great advance for the Microsoft Office office suite. Its main innovation was the change in its interface, with the launch of a tab in which the most important functions were, which improved its use and practicality. It was a very intuitive change that was subsequently included in other Windows elements, such as file explorer.
-Windows Home Server: Windows Server became one of the operating systems most used for servers in the business field. The Windows Home Server version, in addition, added accessibility for the tools and configurations user, remotely access or make backups that until the time of Windows 2000 were not so accessible to domestic users.
-Paint: Since its appearance in 1985, the Paint Image Editor became one of the most beloved tools of the entire Microsoft applications ecosystem. It disappeared in 2017, although there are dozens of imitations of the mythical image editor, which can even be used in WhatsApp Web.
-Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer arrived with Windows 95 and became the predetermined Microsoft browser until it disappeared in 2022
-MSN Hotmail: Hotmail appeared in 1996 thanks to knowing Bhatia and Jack Smith and became one of the most used email services in the 90s, along with Yahoo! Mail and AOL (America online).
Subsequently, in 1997, Microsoft bought it and managed to impose itself for more than a decade as the most used email service in an era where Gmail still did not exist. In addition, he changed his name to Windows Live Hotmail and finally disappeared when he merged with Outlook.
-Microsoft Encarta: In an era where Wikipedia did not exist, Microsoft Encarta was the most popular encyclopedia in the second half of the 90s. This encyclopedia came to have thousands of articles, but with the arrival of Wikipedia, Encarta ceased to exist in the first decade of 2000.
-Windows Movie Maker: Windows Movie Maker was the ideal solution to edit your videos if you didn’t have the possibility of acquiring programs such as Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas.
Of course, they were extremely simple videos, but with some creativity you could create true masterpieces. Being free, it quickly became a very used tool in Windows. It ceased to be included in 2017.
-Xbox 360: It is one of the best game consoles still today. Launched its first version in the early 2000s, in 2005 the Xbox 360 was launched, which competes elbow with PlayStation and Wii of Nintendo. In it you can play great video game sagas such as Halo and Call of Duty.
-HALO: Halo, since he appeared in 2001 by the hand of Bungie Studios, became one of the best franchises of the first -person shooting games of all time.
Counter-Strike and Hal Life, were the most popular games of that time, but Halo managed to impose himself and become a saga that until today is respected and admired. In addition, it became the flagship of the Xbox. Every video game lover must necessarily enjoy this great saga.
-Kinect: Due to the success of Nintendo’s Wii console, with which you could play with a cableless control and with an extremely precise remote sensor, Microsoft decided to create a device that faced it.
From that decision was born Kinect, an Xbox device that was able to scan from head to toe to finally play some video games without the need for a command.
-Windows Phone: With the rise of smartphones, Microsoft created what was first known as Windows Mobile, an operating mobile system that did not succeed until the arrival of the Windows Phone version in 2010.
Its “Metro Design” interface offered a series of characteristics, typefaces and icons that influenced other systems, such as Android from Google and IOS of Apple. Its design was also imitated by Windows 8 and the Xbox One. However, Windows Phone failed to impose itself and the project was closed.
-Surface Pro 3: In mid -2012, Microsoft launched the “Surface” product range, in an attempt to merge what the laptops of the time were with tablets and their touch screens.
The most successful product was Surface Pro 3, a kind of laptop and tablet in one. Currently, there are many alternatives to surface, but Microsoft continues to offer a solid product.
-Zune: It was the company’s attempt to compete with Apple’s iPod. He had a subscription multimedia store where you could enjoy music and videos, had a very attractive design. Over time, he was discontinued, but some of his services passed to Groove Music, which from Windows 10 is available.
-Holens: Perhaps the Hololens were not the best product in Microsoft’s history, but the project had a huge potential, and the idea of using them to play Minecraft with augmented reality glasses, as Microsoft proposed, it was one of the most interesting moments of the last editions of the E3 video game fair.
-Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Flight Simulator could easily be one of the longest -lived video game franchises. It appeared in the late 70s thanks to Sublogic, but Microsoft began marketing this simulator from 1982.
Since then, Microsoft Flight Simulator has evolved to the point that today is one of the best flight simulators that exist thanks to its level of graphics, details, realism and precision.
