In December 2013, the company made a statement to further emphasize that it takes its customers’ privacy and data protection very seriously, saying that “government snooping potentially now constitutes an ‘advanced persistent threat,’ alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks”. In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company’s entire workforce. In mid-2025, Microsoft’s Russian division, Microsoft Rus LLC, filed for bankruptcy after President Vladimir Putin stated that foreign services providers should be throttled in Russia to make way for domestic software. In July 2024, it was reported that the company was laying off its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team. Microsoft has not released statements regarding Activision’s recent legal controversies regarding employee abuse, but reports have alleged that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, a major target of the controversy, will leave the company after the acquisition is finalized.
In 2011, Greenpeace released a report rating the top ten big brands in cloud computing on the sources of electricity for their data centers. Microsoft provides information about reported bugs in its software to intelligence agencies of the United States government, prior to the public release of the fix. In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company’s mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions.

Data Used to Track You

The company’s 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies,a and one of the most valuable brands globally. Microsoft 365 is a subscription service that offers a suite of productivity tools and cloud-based services from Microsoft. The market estimates provided by your team were pretty much in line with what we were theorizing internally. We recently commissioned multiple market research reports from IMARC, and the insights we received were invaluable. The detailed insights and actionable data have consistently provided us with a competitive edge in a rapidly changing alcohol market.

Experience classic Office apps enhanced with AI

In December 2022, Microsoft announced a new 10-year deal with the London Stock Exchange Group for products including Microsoft Azure; Microsoft acquired around 4% of LSEG as part of the deal. Microsoft also named Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company’s portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and holding company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth $68.7 billion. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies’ progress against OKRs. In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software.
The team was easy to work, quick to respond, and flexible to our customization requests. IMARC was a good solution for the data points that we really needed and couldn’t find elsewhere. I appreciate the timely follow ups and post purchase support from the team. I agree the report was timely delivered, meeting the key objectives of the engagement.

The Microsoft Office app is now Microsoft 365 Copilot

One of the best things about IMARC is their flexibility and predisposition to tailor the reports and adapt to our needs. I’d like to express my gratitude for the work you accomplished with the industry report. The team were also extremely flexible in making changes and modifications wherever required. The IMARC team were extremely professional and very cooperative. Overall, the deliverable was well organized and my experience with the project team was good. They were punctual and precise, delivering all the data we required in a clear and well-organized format.

Customers say

In April the company further expressed willingness to embrace open source initiatives by announcing Azure Sphere as its own derivative of the Linux operating system. On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems. In May 2016, the company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million. Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector.

2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox

Though the company had subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft’s stock remained steady for years. When Microsoft went public and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in 1986, the opening stock price was $21; after the trading day, the price closed at $27.75. On March 13, 2020, Gates announced that he is leaving the board of directors of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus more on his philanthropic efforts. Microsoft is ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. On July 2, 2025, Microsoft announced it would cut nearly 4% of its workforce, around 9,000 jobs, to control costs amid heavy AI infrastructure spending, while also restructuring management and streamlining operations. On May 23, 2025, it was reported that Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre has worked with Microsoft to disrupt Lumma Stealer, a significant infostealer threat.

United States government

The IMARC team was very reactive and flexible with regard to our requests. From my first contact, I was grateful for the professionalism shown by the whole IMARC team. I acknowledge the difficulty given by the very short warning for this report, and I think that its quality and your delivering time have been very satisfying. Please extend my thanks to your reach team.

• In October 2024, Microsoft fired two employees, software engineers Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal, who organized an unauthorized vigil at its Redmond headquarters to honor Palestinians killed in the Gaza war.
• Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally.io into its Viva family of employee experience products.
• Please extend my thanks to your reach team.
• The company was the official jersey sponsor of Finland’s national basketball team at EuroBasket 2015, a major sponsor of the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT (2017–2020) and a sponsor of the Renault F1 Team (2016–2020).
• Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak.
• In 2020, Salesforce, the manufacturer of the Slack platform, complained to European regulators about Microsoft due to the integration of the Teams service into Office 365.
• On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase.

We found the reports comprehensive and data-driven, which helped us make informed decisions. The market reports from IMARC have been instrumental in guiding our business strategies. The entire team and company are incredibly thankful for your dedication. We would be happy to reach out to IMARC for more market reports in the future.
Microsoft’s timeline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products was 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear. In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase. Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression “eating your own dog food” is used to describe the policy of using pre-release and beta versions of products inside Microsoft to test them in “real-world” situations. Helpful people can be elected by peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits.
The figures of market study were very close to our assumed figures. Overall experience was good, and the data points were quite helpful. Last project executed by your team was as per our expectations. The IMARC team was very easy to work with and they showed us that it would go the extra mile if we needed anything extra It has contributed to our business needs and provided the market visibility that we required
Despite CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz clarifying that the issue was not a cyberattack, the incident had widespread consequences, leading to delays in air travel, financial transactions, and medical services globally. On July 19, 2024, a global IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting businesses, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide. In June 2024, Microsoft announced that it was building a “hyperscale data centre” in South East Leeds. Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro. In March 2024, Inflection AI’s cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan announced their departure from the company in order to start Microsoft AI, with Microsoft acqui-hiring nearly the entirety of its 70-person workforce. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI’s employees and investors on its board.

• Internal Revenue Service was alleging that the company owed the U.S. $28.9 billion in past taxes, plus penalties related to mis-allocation of corporate profits over a decade.
• In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government.
• The data and market trends gathered from the report was insightful and really assisted while planning future product and growth strategies.
• The employees, part of the group No Azure for Apartheid, sought to address the company’s involvement in the Israeli government’s use of its technology.
• In 2023 Microsoft consumed 24 TWh of electricity, more than countries such as Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, or Tunisia.
• In 2015, Reuters reported that Microsoft had earnings abroad of $76.4 billion which were untaxed by the Internal Revenue Service.

The company had restructured operations in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but those restructuring efforts had failed. On February 28, 2025, Microsoft announced that Skype would be shutting down on May 5, 2025, to streamline its focus on Microsoft Teams. Microsoft also announced relaunch of its controversial tool, Recall, in November 2024 after addressing privacy concerns. The outage was traced back to a flawed update of CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software, which resulted in Microsoft systems crashing and causing disruptions across various sectors. In June 2023, Microsoft released Azure https://www.wildzy.org.uk/ Quantum Elements to run molecular simulations and calculations in computational chemistry and materials science using a combination of AI, high-performance computing and quantum computing.
In 2015, Reuters reported that Microsoft had earnings abroad of $76.4 billion which were untaxed by the Internal Revenue Service. Its total market value was over $410B—with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000. On July 20, 2012, Microsoft posted its first quarterly loss ever, despite earning record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year, with a net loss of $492 million due to a writedown related to the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 2007.
In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. In September 2021, it was announced that the company had acquired Takelessons, an online platform that connects students and tutors in numerous subjects. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be the last version of the operating system. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company’s gaming sales. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire video game company ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, for about $7.5 billion, with the deal expected to occur in the second half of 2021 fiscal year. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company’s war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army.