U.S. computer firm, the leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond, Wash., also publishes books and multimedia titles and manufactures hardware. It was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul G. Allen (b.
1954), who adapted BASIC for use on personal computers. They licensed versions of it to various companies, developed other programming languages, and in 1981 released MS-DOS for the IBM PC. The subsequent adoption of MS-DOS by most other personal-computer manufacturers generated vast revenues for Microsoft, which became a publicly owned corporation in 1986. It issued the first version of Microsoft Word, its popular word-processing program, in 1983, and Microsoft Windows, a graphical user interface for MS-DOS-based computers, in 1985. In 2001 Microsoft released Xbox, a video game console that quickly captured second place in the $10 billion video gaming market. In 2002 Microsoft launched Xbox Live, a broadband gaming network for their consoles.
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