Top Facts - Microsoft

In 1969, Two boys, Bill Gates and Paul Allen met the first time. Later, in 1975, twi childhood friends established the company "Microsoft".

From Where Did The Name Come From?
Microsoft was named "Micro-soft" with a hyphen, which is made from 'microcomputer' and 'software'.
Windows.
In 1980, the company entered the industry of operating systems with their own version of Unix called Xenix. But their major breakthrough came with the release of MS-DOS in 1981. Microsoft eventually came out as the leading provider battling against IBM's PC-DOS.
At that time most of the OS's were A black screen where you could execute commands and return you get 'texts' itself. However it was not very interesting to a average person.So in 1985 Microsoft released a graphical extension to MS-DOS which was almost named "Interface Manager" by Bill Gates but the head of marketing convinced him of naming it "Windows" instead.
Xbox.
Microsoft entered video game console market with the Xbox to compete against Sony and Nintendo. While the Xbox could not really keep up with the Playstation 2, it was nonetheless a success selling millions of units.
Windows Flops.
In more recent years, the perception of Microsoft and especially Windows has been a bit unstable. For example, Windows Vista sold well but is considered by many too be one of the worst operating systems ever made by Microsoft. Windows 7 rekindled the brand but Windows 8 once again received heavy criticism for many of its significant changes. But despite a few minor setback here and there, Microsoft is still one of the most valuable brands in the world.
Change In Logo.
Since 2012, Microsoft has undergone a major re-branding to coincide with the release of Windows 8. One major change was made to the logo of the company. For the first time a version of the famous Windows logo was included in the official Microsoft logo. But the four tiles are more than an icon for Windows. Each tile are supposed to stand for; Windows(blue), Office(red), Xbox(green), and Bind(yellow). And the logo is no exactly new either as it has been used before, like in,one of the Windows 95 commercial.
"Prepare To Fly" To "Yes You Can".
At 2001, during the release of Windows XP, they wanted a catchy slogan. They eventually settled for "Prepare to fly" and printing all promotional material and covers and so on. Then '9/11'' happened and suddenly the slogan was changed to "Yes you can". Because of this, Microsoft had to spend over $200 million.
Internet Explorer.
Around the mid to late 1990's, the IE quickly became the standard browser all across the globe since it came bundled with the OS. And by 2002, it reached its peak of a staggering 95% market share.
But after, browsers like Opera and Firefox slowly began eating away at IE's monopoly.
To counteract this decline, they employed some pretty foul tactics like in 2001, it was revealed that Microsoft had purposely made msn.com either inaccessible or incorrectly displayed in Opera.
Default Avatar.
Every website and service with users and profile pictures has a default avatar. Its usually just a standard silhouette of a person. One version of Microsoft's email client, namely Outlook 2010 uses a silhouette of 'Bill Gates', when he was arrested for speeding without a license.
Critical Update Notification Utility.
When MS introduced the first version of Windows Update shortly after the release of Win 98, they named the software "Critical Update Notification Tool". However they had to change this to "Critical Update Notification Utility" given the unfortunate acronym created by the former.
Bliss.
The default wallpaper used for Win XP is/or at least was, one of the most recognizable images in the world. This photograph was named Bliss and was taken by the photographer 'Charles O'Rear' and was captured here in Sonoma Country in California in 1996. Many belived it was photoshopped, but in fact, it is the raw unaltered original. After he'd taken the photo, he put it up for sale on the stock image sirte Corbis. However this site was owned by Bill Gates himself. Therefore, during 2000, MS wanted to buy all the rights to the image. While the exact amount has never been disclosed, it is said to be one of the largest payments ever made for a single photograph.
However, now that place is covered with grapevines and may not be recognized.
Just Bang It.
Before MS launched their new search engine in 2009 they needed a short and memorable name. Eventually, they decided to use "Bang". But they had to rethink this decision rather quickly as it didn't work as well when used as verb. As in "Just Bang It". Therefore they changed it to "Bing".
MikeRoweSoft.com
In 2004, a teenager named Mike Rowe registered the domain 'MikeRoweSoft.com'. SO phonetically, when said out loud, it almost sounds like Microsoft. Only based on this, MS decided to take legal action against him and the whole thing received world wide media attention. The site got none of MS products, as he used it to run his own part-time web design business. But eventually, an agreement was reached, with Mike Rowe granting ownership of the domain to MS in exchange for various MS products including Xbox.
What happened to Windows 9?
Back when Windows made its debut, things were simple. The first release names Windows 1.01 was indeed version 1.01. And it continued to quite a while. The name and actual version of the s/w matched each other. Then they started using names like Windows 98,98,NT,ME,2000,XP,Vista, and things got a bit confusing. Windows Vista is actually version 6.0 and Windows 7 is 6.1, Windows 8 is 6.2 and 8.1 is 6.3.
Now the logical thing would be to expect the next released to be named Windows 9 with a version of 6.4. But instead they announced Windows 10. The official explanation is that this new release of Windows will, form here on out, be Windows. In other words, each new update will just have a new version number and not a new name.
Another possibility though is that the name Windows 9 could cause issues for some legacy applications. Thousands of programs could be using code to check what version of Windows its running on. Basically, it's checking if the name includes a '9' and if it does it means its either Win 95 or 95. But if Win 9 was introduced, it would completely disrupt system and potentially cause some major issues.