From Floppy Discs To Cloud Computing: Microsoft Marks 50 Years Of Tech Revolution

Microsoft Corporation, the American multinational technology company based in Redmond, Washington, is celebrating its 50th anniversary today. Founded in 1975, the company has been a key player in the digital age, shaping the technology landscape over the past five decades.

As it reaches this milestone, Microsoft continues to play a major role in daily life. From its humble beginnings to its peak of a $3 trillion valuation, the company has faced both challenges and triumphs. Notably, last year's IT infrastructure crash was a significant low point, but Microsoft remains an influential force in the tech industry.

Today, most people likely interact with Microsoft in some form, whether through Outlook for emails, Teams for meetings, or using Windows as their operating system. As Microsoft celebrates its 50 years, it reflects the ever-changing journey of one of the world's most prominent technology giants.

'Achilles heel'

Microsoft remains in the shadow of other US tech giants when it comes to offerings such as social networks, smartphones and the AI-infused digital assistants that have become woven into people's lives, but it is not for lack of effort.

Microsoft introduced Xbox video game consoles in 2001, steadily building up its stable of studios, making the blockbuster buy of Activision Blizzard two years ago and adding an online subscription service for players.

And despite its launch of the Bing search engine in 2009, Google still dominates that market.

Microsoft in 2016 bought the career-focused social network LinkedIn, which has seen steady growth. But it still lacks the reach of Meta's Facebook or Instagram or the influence of Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter).

Microsoft is among those in the running to buy TikTok, which faces a ban in the United States if not sold by China-based ByteDance.

While Apple and Google have excelled at making it easy or even fun for users to engage with products, that has been an "Achilles heel" for Microsoft, according to Goldman.

"It's never been a strong suit of theirs," the analyst said.

Mobile miss

Known for a focus on sales rather than innovation, Steve Ballmer, who followed Gates as chief of Microsoft from 2000 to 2013, has been faulted for missing the shift to smartphones and other mobile computing devices.

His successor, Nadella, took over with a vow to make Microsoft a "mobile-first, cloud-first" company, and Microsoft has since invested heavily in AI, taking a stake in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and building the technology into offerings including Bing, though to little avail.

Behind in AI?

Independent analyst Jack Gold believes that despite those investments and efforts, Microsoft lags in AI because it lacks its own chips or foundation model.

"They are not as advanced in that as AWS and Google, so they're still playing a little bit of catchup in that space," Gold said of Microsoft.

Google Cloud's revenue growth is on pace to overtake Microsoft's Azure for second place in the market in two years, the analyst said.

(With inputs from AFP)