25 Interesting Facts About The History Of Microsoft And Its Rise To Domination
Nathan Johnson
Published
04/11/2016
in
wow
When it comes to large tech companies, there are few that have forged a reputation for themselves that is more ubiquitous than that of Microsoft
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1.
The generic user outline used in Microsoft Outlook 2010 was actually Bill Gate's mugshot from when he got caught driving without a license -
2.
Charles Simonyi, the inventor of Microsoft Office, has paid nearly $30 million to visit the International Space Station…twice! -
3.
A guy named Bob was the first to buy the domain name "windows2000.com". Ironically, Microsoft owned "bob.com" so they worked out a deal. -
4.
For every Android device, Microsoft gets about $8 in royalties. In 2013 that worked out to nearly $3.5 billion -
5.
Microsoft intentionally made msn.com look wrong on Opera browsers in order to push people to use Internet Explorer. -
6.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is the company's longest running product. It precedes Windows by 3 years! -
7.
In 1997, Microsoft actually gave Apple $150 million in a deal that has been misconstrued as altruistic (it wasn't, but it is still funny that Microsoft paid its competitor so much) -
8.
One of the reasons Microsoft included Solitaire in Windows was to familiarize users with drag and drop interfaces. This was something most people still had no experience with. -
9.
In 2001, some Microsoft employees continued to work right through an earthquake in spite of alarms. It wasn't until they received an on-screen warning to leave the building that they left their workstations -
10.
The original Halo video game was a third person shooter for the Mac. At least until Microsoft bought Bungie and released the game on Xbox instead. -
11.
3 billionaires and more than 12,000 millionaires owe their fortunes to Microsoft -
12.
Microsoft Encarta was originally codenamed Gandalf. It's demise has been largely attributed to Wikipedia -
13.
One of Microsoft's most famous interview questions was "Why are manhole covers round?" -
14.
In order to acknowledge the transition from the print age to the digital age, Microsoft changed its official font from Times New Roman to Calibri 11 -
15.
In 1995, Windows95 was the second most installed piece of software. The video game DOOM was first. -
16.
In 2104, Microsoft and the NFL struck a deal to use Microsoft Surface as the league's official tablet. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the announcers kept calling them iPads. -
17.
It was in 1998 that the Microsoft DirectX team came up with an idea for a new game console and called it the directXbox. It was then shortened to Xbox. -
18.
The first mention of Microsoft was in a letter Bill Gates wrote to his co-founder Paul Allen. In the letter, Bill hyphenated the company name (Micro-soft). -
19.
The average "Softie" (Microsoft employee) is a 38 year old male -
20.
Bill Gates bought the Da Vinci Codex for $30 million. He then had the pages scanned and released as screen savers for Windows 95 -
21.
A teenager (Mike Rowe) once registered the domain mikerowesoft.com for his web business. He ended up getting sued by Microsoft. -
22.
DirectX was originally codenamed the "Manhattan Project" because Microsoft was trying to end Japan's domination of the video game industry. Yes, somebody at Microsoft had a very dark sense of humor. -
23.
The average starting salary for a Microsoft developer is $106,000 -
24.
Microsoft has over 10,000 patents which makes it one of the top 5 patent holders in the United States -
25.
When Internet Explorer 4 was first released, some drunk Microsoft employees planted a huge Internet Explorer logo in the fountain outside of Netscape's headquarters
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