Microsoft is the largest software company in the computer world, and its operating systems are on almost all computers. Its newest release of Windows 95, and the Microsoft Office 95 has increased the size of this already gargantuan company. It has been so successful because of the low priced and easy to use software it creates. It creates operating systems, networking solutions, database, word processing, and almost any other type of software you can think of. Their products are used by everyone ranging from six year olds to presidents of large corporations. The newest idea that microsoft has is to integrate all their software with the internet, the latest rage in computing, and they are fighting to beat competitors such as Netscape and Sun.

Microsoft was founded by William Gates, a 19-year old dropout from Harvard, and his friend, Paul Allen. The two rewrote BASIC for many platforms, a language that let people create programs for their PC. Then, IBM chose them to write an operatiing system for the new IBM-PCs. Gates and Allen paid $50,000 to Tim Patterson for his QDOS, and renamed it to MS-DOS. The operating system was extremely successful, and soon, all other PC manufacturers wanted to be compatible with IBM. This gave Microsoft the chance to make huge profits, and they did. Their next big success was Windows, which was a graphical operating system that became popular because it was extremely easy to use. Then, in 1993, Windows NT was released, which made networking extremely easy. By this time, Bill Gates was a billionaire, and he had monopolized the pc operating system market.

NYSE symbol: MSFT