Today’s selection

The layoffs primarily affected Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected. In October 2014, Microsoft revealed that it was almost done with eliminating 18,000 employees, which was its largest-ever layoff sweep. Microsoft employed 127,104 people as of June 5, 2014, making this about a 14 percent reduction of its workforce as the biggest Microsoft layoff ever.

• Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide).
• This is due to the company being tax resident in Bermuda as mentioned in the accounts for ‘Microsoft Round Island One, a subsidiary that collects license fees from the use of Microsoft software worldwide.
• On a Friday afternoon in January 2024, Microsoft disclosed that a Russian state-sponsored group hacked into its corporate systems.
• In June 2022, Microsoft published the report on Russian cyber attacks and concluded that state-backed Russian hackers "have engaged in "strategic espionage" against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups" in 42 countries supporting Kyiv.

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In November 2018, the company won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring augmented reality (AR) headset technology into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers. The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. 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.

Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models. On 9 March 2026, Microsoft unveiled the Copilot Cowork tool, which is based on Claude Cowork, tapping into the growing demand for autonomous agents. In March 2026, Microsoft-controlled discussion forums banned the nickname Microslop, used to express pushback against Microsoft’s Copilot-based and GenAI efforts. In June 2025, a United Nations report on corporations complicit in the Gaza genocide showed that Microsoft was one of several companies "central to Israel’s surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction." 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 May 2025, Microsoft issued an unsigned statement confirming that these services had been made available to Israel, while denying that these tools were employed during the massacre of the people of Gaza. Microsoft Azure is one of multiple cloud computing services used for data storage by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The European Commission issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft’s practice since 2019 gave Teams an unfair market advantage and limited interoperability with competing software. In June 2024, Microsoft faced a potential EU fine after regulators accused it of abusing market power by bundling its Teams video-conferencing app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software. 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. 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.

2014: Windows 8/8.1, Xbox One, Outlook.com, and Surface devices

In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation’s logos, products, services, and Atefia registration websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices, and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security.

2011: Microsoft Azure, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Microsoft Stores

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 September 2014, Microsoft laid off 2,100 people, including 747 people in the Seattle–Redmond area, where the company is headquartered. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to government bonds.

present: Acquisitions, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 11

The corporate headquarters, informally known as the Microsoft Redmond campus, is located at One Microsoft Way in Redmond, Washington. The "Connector" does not compete with the public bus system and works with it to provide a cohesive transportation network not just for its employees but also for the public. It created one of the world’s largest private bus systems, the "Connector", to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the "Shuttle Connect" uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel. As of January 2011,update it has no products that are completely free from PVC and BFRs.needs update Microsoft’s deadline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products was in 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear. In 2011, Greenpeace released a report rating the top ten big brands in cloud computing on the sources of electricity for their data centers.

In October 2024, Microsoft fired two employees, software engineer Hossam Nasr and data scientist Abdo Mohamed, who organized an unauthorized vigil at its Redmond headquarters to honor Palestinians killed in the Gaza war. This inquiry was part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to enforce guidelines on the power of major tech companies. The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI. The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant. Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the Microsoft’s software.

Microsoft noted in a blog post that the attack might have been prevented if the accounts in question had enabled multi-factor authentication, a defensive measure which is widely recommended in the industry, including by Microsoft itself. On a Friday afternoon in January 2024, Microsoft disclosed that a Russian state-sponsored group hacked into its corporate systems. In April 2016, the company sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company’s and customers’ rights. 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". A Microsoft spokesperson stated that the corporation runs several programs that facilitate the sharing of such information with the U.S. government. The cuts affected multiple divisions, including Xbox, with 830 positions eliminated at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.

Under his direction, the company has expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022 and acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023. Since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing and acquired LinkedIn in 2016. He oversaw the then-largest of Microsoft’s corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line—the Surface—in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia. 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.