Microsoft is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox, the Xbox 360, the Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X as well as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS.

The company's initial public offering was held on March 14, 1986. The stock, which eventually closed at $27.75 a share, peaked at $29.25 a share shortly after the market opened for trading. After the offering, Microsoft had a market capitalization of $519.777 million.^[1] Microsoft has subsequently acquired over 225 companies, purchased stakes in 64 companies, and made 25 divestments. Of the companies that Microsoft has acquired, 107 were based in the United States. Microsoft has not released financial details for most of these mergers and acquisitions.

Since Microsoft's first acquisition in 1986, it has purchased an average of six companies a year. The company purchased more than ten companies a year between 2005 and 2008, and it acquired 18 firms in 2006, the most in a single year, including Onfolio, Lionhead Studios, Massive Incorporated, ProClarity, Winternals Software, and Colloquis. Microsoft has made fourteen acquisitions worth over one billion dollars: Skype (2011), aQuantive (2007), Fast Search & Transfer (2008), Navision (2002), Visio Corporation (2000), Yammer (2012), Nokia's mobile and devices division (2013), Mojang (2014), LinkedIn (2016), GitHub (2018), Affirmed Networks (2020), ZeniMax Media (2020), Nuance Communications (2021), and Activision Blizzard (2022).

Microsoft has also purchased several stakes valued at more than a billion dollars. It obtained an 11.5% stake in Comcast for $1 billion, a 22.98% stake in Telewest for $2.263 billion, and a 3% stake in AT&T for $5 billion. Among Microsoft's divestments, in which parts of the company are sold to another company, only Expedia Group was sold for more than a billion dollars; USA Networks purchased the company on February 5, 2002, for $1.372 billion (~$2.22 billion in 2023).

Key acquisitions

One of Microsoft's first acquisitions was Forethought on July 30, 1987. Forethought was founded in 1983 and developed a presentation program that would later be known as Microsoft PowerPoint.^[2]

On December 31, 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail.com for $500 million (~$882 million in 2023), its largest acquisition at the time, and integrated Hotmail into its MSN group of services.^[3] Hotmail, a free webmail service founded in 1996 by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia,^[4] had more than 8.5 million subscribers earlier that month.^[5]

In 1999, Microsoft reportedly discussed a buyout of Nintendo. However, execs failed to negotiate a deal, with Xbox co-inventor Kevin Bachus explaining "They just laughed their asses off."^[6][7][8]

Microsoft acquired Seattle-based Visio Corporation on January 7, 2000, for $1.375 billion (~$2.31 billion in 2023). Visio, a software company, was founded in 1990 as Axon Corporation, and had its initial public offering in November 1995.^[9] The company developed the diagramming application software, Visio, which was integrated into Microsoft's product line as Microsoft Visio after its acquisition.

On July 12, 2002, Microsoft purchased Navision for $1.33 billion (~$2.15 billion in 2023). The company, which developed the technology for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV enterprise resource planning software, was integrated into Microsoft as a new division named Microsoft Business Solutions,^[10] later renamed to Microsoft Dynamics.^[11]

Microsoft purchased aQuantive, an advertising company, on August 13, 2007, for $6.333 billion (~$8.97 billion in 2023). Before the acquisition, aQuantive was ranked 14th in terms of revenue among advertising agencies worldwide. aQuantive had three subsidiaries at the time of the acquisition: Avenue A/Razorfish, one of the world's largest digital agencies,^[12] Atlas Solutions, and DRIVE Performance Solutions.^[13]

Microsoft acquired the Norwegian enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer on April 25, 2008, for $1.191 billion (~$1.66 billion in 2023) to boost its search technology.^[14]

On May 10, 2011, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Skype Technologies, creator of the VoIP service Skype, for $8.5 billion (~$11.4 billion in 2023).^[15] With a value 32 times larger than Skype's operating profits, the deal was Microsoft's largest acquisition at the time.^[16][17] Skype would become a division within Microsoft, with Skype's former CEO Tony Bates —then the division's first president —reporting to the CEO of Microsoft.^[18]

On September 2, 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire the mobile hardware division of Nokia (which had established a long-term partnership with Microsoft to produce smartphones built off its Windows Phone platform)^[19] in a deal worth 3.79 billion euros, along with another 1.65 billion to license Nokia's portfolio of patents. Steve Ballmer considered the purchase to be a "bold step into the future" for both companies, primarily as a result of its recent collaborations. The acquisition, scheduled to close in early 2014 pending regulatory approval, did not include the Here mapping service or the infrastructure division Nokia Solutions and Networks, which will be retained by Nokia.^[20][21] While the deal went through, in May 2016 Microsoft abandoned its mobile business and sold the Nokia feature phone line.

In September 2014, Microsoft purchased Mojang for $2.5 billion (~$3.17 billion in 2023).^[22]

On June 13, 2016, Microsoft announced it planned to acquire the professional networking site LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, to be completed by the end of 2016. The acquisition would keep LinkedIn as a distinct brand and retain its current CEO, Jeff Weiner, who will subsequently report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.^[23] The acquisition was completed on December 8, 2016.^[24]

On June 4, 2018, Microsoft acquired the popular code repository site GitHub for $7.5 billion (~$8.96 billion in 2023) in Microsoft stock.^[25]

On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire ZeniMax Media and all its subsidiaries for $7.5 billion (~$8.7 billion in 2023). The acquisition was completed on March 9, 2021.

On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard, an American video game holding company, for $68.7 billion in cash.^[26] The deal has been approved by both companies' board of directors and was finalized on October 13, 2023, with the total cost of the acquisition amounting to $75.4 billion, following international government regulatory review of the action.^[27][28]

Acquisitions

	Date	Company	Business	Country	Value (USD)	References
1	June 20, 1986	Dynamical Systems Research	Operating systems	United States	1,500,000	[29][30]
2	July 30, 1987	Forethought, Inc.	Computer software	United States	14,000,000	[31]
3	March 31, 1991	Consumers Software	Software	Canada	—	[32]
4	June 29, 1992	Fox Software	PC database software	United States	174,000,000	[33][34]
5	February 28, 1994	Softimage	Wholesale 3-D visualization software	Canada	130,000,000	[35]
6	September 27, 1994	Altamira Software	Software	United States	—	[36]
7	November 1, 1994	NextBase	Software	United Kingdom	—	[37]
8	November 15, 1994	One Tree Software	Software	United States	—	[38]
9	February 23, 1995	RenderMorphics	3D graphics hardware	United States	—	[39]
10	July 10, 1995	Network Managers	Systems design	United Kingdom	—	[40]
11	October 17, 1995	The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks	Software	United States	—	[41]
12	November 6, 1995	Netwise	Computer software	United States	—	[42]
13	December 12, 1995	Bruce Artwick Organization	Programming	United States	—	[43]
14	January 16, 1996	Vermeer Technologies	Software	United States	133,000,000	[44]
15	March 6, 1996	VGA-Animation Software Div[note 1]	Software	Germany	—	[45]
16	March 12, 1996	Colusa Software	Software	United States	—	[46]
17	April 16, 1996	Exos	Video game controllers	United States	—	[47]
18	April 23, 1996	Aspect Software Engineering	Computer software	United States	14,150,000	[48]
19	June 11, 1996	eShop Inc.	Software	United States	50,000,000	[49]
20	June 17, 1996	Electric Gravity	Electronic games	United States	—	[50]
21	November 1, 1996	Panorama Software Sys-On-Line[note 2]	Software	Canada	—	[51]
22	February 3, 1997	NetCarta	Internet software	United States	20,000,000	[52]
23	March 3, 1997	Interse	Internet software	United States	—	[53]
24	April 30, 1997	WebTV Networks	Internet service provider	United States	425,000,000	[54]
25	May 7, 1997	Dimension X	Java-based platforms	United States	—	[55]
26	June 13, 1997	Cooper & Peters	Programming	United States	—	[56]
27	June 30, 1997	LinkAge Software	Internet software development	Canada	—	[57]
28	August 5, 1997	VXtreme	Internet video software	United States	—	[58]
29	December 31, 1997	Hotmail	Internet software	United States	500,000,000	[59]
30	February 23, 1998	Flash Communications	Enterprise instant messaging software	United States	—	[60][61]
31	April 15, 1998	Firefly	Relationship management software	United States	40,000,000	[62]
32	April 28, 1998	MESA Group	Data sharing software	United States	—	[63]
33	August 25, 1998	Valence Research	Internet software	United States	—	[64]
34	November 6, 1998	LinkExchange	Internet advertising network	United States	265,000,000	[65]
35	January 11, 1999	FASA Interactive	Video games	United States	—	[66]
36	March 4, 1999	CompareNet	Shopping online	United States	—	[67]
37	March 26, 1999	Numinous Technologies	Software	United States	—	[68]
38	April 19, 1999	Access Software	Video games	United States	—	[69]
39	April 27, 1999	Interactive Objects-Digital	Web music software	United States	—	[70]
40	April 30, 1999	Jump Networks	Internet service provider	United States	—	[71]
41	June 7, 1999	ShadowFactor Software	Wholesale computer software	United States	—	[72]
42	June 15, 1999	Omnibrowse	Internet software	United States	—	[73]
43	June 28, 1999	Intrinsa	Defect detection software	United States	58,900,000	[74]
44	July 1, 1999	Sendit	Application software	Sweden	125,420,000	[75]
45	July 7, 1999	Zoomit	Encryption software	Canada	—	[76]
46	July 21, 1999	STNC	Community software	United Kingdom	—	[77]
47	September 19, 1999	Softway Systems	Computer programming	United States	—	[78]
48	October 29, 1999	Entropic	Software	United States	—	[79] Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Secure_Islands Text je dostupný za podmienok Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 Unported; prípadne za ďalších podmienok. Podrobnejšie informácie nájdete na stránke Podmienky použitia.  Navigácia: Veda > Analytika Antropológia Aplikované vedy Bibliometria Dejiny vedy Encyklopédie Filozofia vedy Forenzné vedy Humanitné vedy Knižničná veda Kryogenika Kryptológia Kulturológia Literárna veda Medzidisciplinárne oblasti Metódy kvantitatívnej analýzy Metavedy Metodika Metodológia vedy Náboženstvo a veda Náučná literatúra Podvody vo vede Popularizácia vedy Potravinárstvo Prírodné vedy Pseudoveda Scientometria Spoločenské vedy Teórie Teatrológia Technické vedy Technika Terminológia Umenie Výskum Veda Veda a technika podľa štátu Veda a technika podľa kontinentu Veda a technika podľa roka Veda v kozme Vedci Vedecká literatúra Vedecké databázy Vedecké experimenty Vedecké konferencie Vedecké metódy Vedecké ocenenia Vedecké organizácie Vedecké parky Vedeckí spisovatelia Vzdelávanie Záhady Príbuzné výrazy: Text je dostupný za podmienok Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 Unported; prípadne za ďalších podmienok. Podrobnejšie informácie nájdete na stránke Podmienky použitia. www.astronomia.sk | www.biologia.sk | www.botanika.sk | www.dejiny.sk | www.economy.sk | www.elektrotechnika.sk | www.estetika.sk | www.farmakologia.sk | www.filozofia.sk | Fyzika | www.futurologia.sk | www.genetika.sk | www.chemia.sk | www.lingvistika.sk | www.politologia.sk | www.psychologia.sk | www.sexuologia.sk | www.sociologia.sk | www.veda.sk I www.zoologia.sk