Is Microsoft too small to see?

Microsoft is a pioneer in the development of personal computer software in the world. Bill? Gates is its founder. Ranked third in the brand list, ranked 22nd in the list of the top 500 world brands of 65,438+000 large companies compiled by the World Brand Lab in 2006, and the brand published in Barron's Weekly. This company ranked 44th in the ranking of Fortune 500 companies in the world in 2008.

The history of Microsoft

1975 19 years old bill? Gates dropped out of Harvard University, and his high school alumnus Paul? Allen sold Basic (beginner's universal symbol instruction code) together and translated Pei Ji. The basic meaning is "all-directional symbolic instruction code for beginners", which is a programming language designed for beginners. When Gates was still studying at Harvard University, they compiled a language for MITS Altair. Later, Gates and Allen moved to Albuquerque and founded Microsoft in a local hotel room. 1979, MITS went bankrupt, and Microsoft continued to develop mainly by modifying its basic procedures. At the beginning of the company, it mainly sold basic interpreters. Computer enthusiasts at that time often developed small BASIC interpreters themselves and distributed them for free. However, because Microsoft is one of the few commercial BASIC interpreters, many home computer manufacturers use Microsoft BASIC interpreters in their systems. With the rapid growth of Microsoft BASIC interpreter, manufacturers began to adopt the syntax and other functions of Microsoft BASIC to ensure compatibility with existing Microsoft products. It is precisely because of this cycle that Microsoft BASIC has gradually become a recognized market standard, and the company has gradually occupied the whole market. Since then, they have tried to enter the home computer market by designing the MSX home computer standard (but failed). From 65438 to 0977, Microsoft moved to Bellevue, where it developed PC programming software. 1980, IBM chose Microsoft to write key operating system software for its new PC, which was a major turning point in the company's development. Due to the tight time and complicated program, Microsoft spent $50,000 to buy the right to use an operating system from Seattle programmer Patterson, and then rewritten it into disk operating system software (MS- DOS).

The operating system software MS-DOS(DOS is the abbreviation of disk operating system, which means disk operating system) developed by Microsoft Company 198 1 for IBM-PC(IBM is the abbreviation of International Business Machines Corporation, which means International Business Machines Corporation). 1983, Microsoft signed a contract with IBM to provide the basic interpreter for IBM PC, and then Microsoft provided the operating system for IBM machines. Microsoft later bought the QDOS rights of Tim Patterson, and after some rewriting, it sold it to the market through IBM and named it Microsoft DOS. MS-DOS has achieved great success. The popularity of IBM-PC makes MS-DOS a great success, because other PC manufacturers want to be compatible with IBM. MS-DOS was authorized by many companies, so it became the standard operating system of PC in 1980s. By 1984, Microsoft's sales exceeded 1 billion dollars. Subsequently, Microsoft continued to develop software for computers of IBM, Apple and Radio Equipment Company. But with the growing strength of Microsoft, Microsoft and IBM have become competitors in many ways. 199 1 year, due to the conflict of interest, IBM and Apple Computer, Inc. dissolved their cooperation with Microsoft, but the cooperation between IBM and Microsoft never stopped, and the two companies maintained a complicated competitive and cooperative relationship. Microsoft's products include file system software [MS-DOS and Xenix:Xenix is a personal computer version of Unix operating system, which was developed by Microsoft for Intel processor in 1979, and can also be executed on DEPDP-11+0 or Apple Lisa computer. XENIX inherits the characteristics of UNIX, has a multi-person and multi-task working environment, and conforms to the interface specification (SVID) of UNIX System V, operating environment software (windows series of Windows system), application software MS-Office, multimedia and computer games, books about computers and CDROM products. 1992, the company acquired Fox Company and entered the database software market. 1983, Paul? Allen left Microsoft with Hodgkin's disease and later set up his own company. Allen owns 65,438+05% shares in Microsoft and still attends the board meeting. 1986, the company went public. Gates kept 45% of the company's shares, which made him the first billionaire in 1987 personal computer industry. In 1996, his total personal assets have exceeded1800 million dollars. 1997 reached $34 billion. 1998 broke through the 50 billion mark and became the richest man in the world. Microsoft's flagship product, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/ME/XP/Server 2003/Vista, has successfully occupied the vast market from PC to commercial workstations and even servers, bringing huge profits to Microsoft. The company also came from behind in the field of internet software and seized a lot of market share. There is a saying in the IT software industry: "Never do what Microsoft wants to do". Visible Microsoft's great potential has penetrated into all aspects of the software industry, pervasive and invincible. Microsoft's great influence has brought great pressure to its software peers, putting itself in the position of defendant in anti-monopoly law. Even Intel, a reliable partner for many years, turned against the court. In September, 200012000, in view of the economic depression, the American government intended to revive the American information industry and refused to split Microsoft. At this point, this case against Microsoft's anti-monopoly law has come to an end. At present, the company has branches in more than 60 countries, and the number of employees worldwide is close to 44,000.

Microsoft core business group

Personal service group (PSG): led by Bob Muglia, vice president of the group, is committed to providing more convenient online connection for individual users and enterprise users, and providing software services for various devices. PSG includes individuals from Microsoft. NET initiative, service platform department, mobile group, MSN's Internet access service, user equipment group and user interface platform department.

MSN and personal service business group: led by Yusuf Mehdi, vice president, responsible for network program development, business development and global marketing and sales of MSN and other Microsoft services. Including: MSN eShop, MSN Carpoint (MSN Home Advisor (MSN Sidewalk, MSNBC startup, Slate and MSNTV platform group), led by Jim Allchin, vice president of the group, responsible for constantly improving all aspects of the Windows platform-for example, making storage, communication, message notification, * * * enjoying images and listening to music a natural extension of the Windows experience. In addition, this group includes. NET enterprise server group, development tools department and Windows digital media department.

Office and business services group: led by Jeff Raikes, vice president of the group, is responsible for developing applications and services to improve productivity and business processes. This work includes gradually transforming the fully functional and powerful Microsoft Office into a service-based product. In addition to the Office department, the business tools department also includes bCentral (a free professional counter provided by Microsoft, which is used by many professionals because of its high accuracy and customized function, and can be seen in many professional blogs) and Great Plains (this Microsoft business solution belongs to an application software platform spanning multiple business aspects). Business application departments including finance, distribution, human resources and salary management, customer relationship management, crm, project accounting, e-commerce, manufacturing and supply chain management will all belong to this department.

Global sales, marketing and service group: led by Orlando Ayala, vice president of the group, it integrates Microsoft's sales and service partners to meet the needs of Microsoft users all over the world. These users include: enterprise users, small and medium-sized institutions, educational institutions, program developers and individual users. In addition, the group also includes Microsoft product support services, network solutions group, enterprise partner group, marketing organization and Microsoft business organizations in three major regions around the world.

Operations Group: led by President and Chief Operating Officer Rick Belluzzo, responsible for managing business operations and all business plans. Including the company's financial, administrative, human resources and information technology departments.

Microsoft products

software product

[DOS] MS-DOS: Microsoft's early product, which is a command line interface. The earlier version of Windows should run under MS-DOS, but the products of Windows NT and later versions can not run MS-DOS. However, because the software and hardware can't work normally under Windows NT, Microsoft continues to introduce the transitional products of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me running simultaneously under MS-DOS.

Windows: a graphical operating system called Windows; It has many versions. At present, the latest version of the desktop version is [WINDOWS VISTA].

The latest version of the server is Windows Server 2008, and the next generation operating system is called Windows 7. Almost all personal computers are pre-installed with Windows. For more details, see the history of Microsoft Windows. In addition, the company's latest smartphone system is Windows Mobile 6.0. Windows Media Player11is the latest player version. The latest communication software is Windows Live Messneger. In recent years, Windows Defender, Windows Desktop Search, Windows Steadystate and virtual PC have also developed. Software developed and running on the Windows operating system platform is sometimes started from Windows, such as Windows Defender.

Games For Windows is a new plan of Microsoft, including the famous XBOX 360, DirectX 10 and so on.

Microsoft Office: Microsoft's office software suite, which may include Word (word processing), Excel (spreadsheet), Access (desktop database), PowerPoint (slide show production), Outlook (personal mail and schedule management) (called Windows Mail in Windows Vista) and SharePoint Designer 2007 (web page production, previous version called FrontPage) according to different versions. Microsoft also produces a version of Apple Macintosh for Apple computers. The latest version of 2007 Microsoft Office.

Internet Explorer: It is Microsoft's web browser. Is currently the most widely used browser in the world. Starting with Windows 95, it is set as the default browser for all versions of Microsoft Windows. It can also be used on Apple Macintosh. Microsoft invested $400 million to pre-install this browser on the Mac. [IE]

Windows Media Player: It is a program that plays audio and video.

Microsoft also uses the name Encarta to produce a series of reference products, such as encyclopedias and atlases.

Microsoft has also developed an integrated development environment for application system development, named Microsoft Visual Studio. At present, the corresponding development tool Visual Studio. NET for programming. NET environment has been released. [VISUAL STUDIO]

Hardware products

Although Microsoft is a software company in general, it also produces some computer hardware products, which are usually used to support its special software commodity strategy:

An early example is the Microsoft mouse, which was used to encourage more users to use the graphical user interface (GUI) of the Microsoft operating system. Because GUI is rarely used instead of mouse, the popularity of mouse will help more users to use Windows. Microsoft has established the standard of IntelliMouse (mouse with middle button and scroll wheel), and the new scroll wheel is convenient for users to page up and down when browsing the web.

Microsoft also sells game hardware products, such as joysticks.

The company also acquired Internet equipment company WebTV to support its MSN Internet service.

The Xbox game console launched by the company in 20001marked the beginning of the company's entry into the game terminal market worth tens of billions of dollars, which was previously dominated by Sony and Nintendo.

On June 22nd, 2005, 165438+ Microsoft released Xbox 360, the second generation home video game machine.

match

Imperial Age (there are six genuine editions: Imperial Age 1, Roman Renaissance in Imperial Age, conquerors in Imperial Age 2 and Imperial Age 2, Asian dynasties and chiefs in Imperial Age 3 and Imperial Age 3).

Microsoft flight simulator (MSFT)

Microsoft train simulator

Microsoft simulation car

Halo (halo)

halo 2

Halo 3

The Rise and Expansion of the Nation: The Rise of the Nation: The Great Patriotic War and the less successful Rise of the Nation: The Rise of the Legend.

Note 1: The Rise of the Nation was jointly developed by Microsoft and BigHuge.

Note 2: Listing 2:Windows Vista Game Works

Networking products

From 65438 to the mid-1990s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into the field of computer networks. On August 24th, Microsoft launched the online service MSN (Microsoft Network), 1995. MSN is a direct competitor of AOL and a major brand of other Microsoft network products.

1996, Microsoft co-founded MSNBC, a comprehensive 24-hour news channel and online news service provider, with American broadcasting giant NBC.

1At the end of 997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail, the earliest and most popular webmail service provider. Hotmail changed its name to MSN Hotmail and became. NET Passport, an integrated login service system.

MSN Messenger is an instant messaging client program launched by Microsoft on 1999. Is the main competitor of AOL instant messaging (AIM) and ICQ. Developed into Windows Live Messenger.

Microsoft Live online integrates internet services.

Monopoly problem

Microsoft's Windows products effectively monopolized the desktop computer operating system market. Those who hold the above views point out that almost all personal computers sold in the market are pre-installed with Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Some observers claim that Microsoft, as a monopoly enterprise, puts its competitors in an awkward position:

On the one hand, competitors are unwilling to recognize Microsoft's monopoly position. Because in a monopoly market, there is only one product or service provider. Therefore, for competitors, calling Microsoft a monopolist will put them in a loser position: this is equivalent to whether they define their own existence or deny their own survival and competitiveness.

On the other hand, competitors want to compare Microsoft to a monopoly enterprise, because it will bring benefits to them. First of all, this may lead to the intervention of market managers (government). Secondly, Microsoft competitors who are regarded as "Reservoir Dogs" may win in public relations to stimulate sales.

Whether Microsoft is in a monopoly position or not, we can be sure that:

In most microcomputer software markets, Microsoft is the leading enterprise.

This dominance has caused a lot of dissatisfaction.

This dissatisfaction does not only exist among competitors.

Abuse of Microsoft's monopoly position

Some people criticized that Microsoft tried to use its monopoly position in the desktop computer operating system market to expand its market share in other markets, such as Internet Explorer, Windows NT, Microsoft Office and Windows Media Player.

After Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows operating system, Microsoft gained a very large share in the browser market. Partly because of this behavior, Microsoft was ruled by the US federal court to abuse its dominant position in the US operating system market. (See Microsoft antitrust case for details).

In all these allegations, Microsoft defended itself on the grounds of meeting customer needs.

Some people also criticized Microsoft's "hug and extend" strategy. Microsoft tried to add patent function to the established standards of opening up, so as to use its market advantage to finally reach the standard of controlling "expansion". Some people call this strategy "hug, extend and extinguish".

The political influence of Microsoft

Microsoft responded to these legal threats and public opinion with intensive political lobbying activities and millions of dollars in political donations. According to the website of Center for Response Politics (opensecrets.org), 43% of Microsoft's political donations in the last federal election in the United States went to the Democratic Party, and 57% went to the Democratic Party and the party.

Advantages of Microsoft products

The program running on PC hardware is not necessarily technically better than the large-scale program it replaces, but it has two incomparable advantages: it provides more freedom for end users and is cheaper. The success of Microsoft is also the prelude to the development of personal computers.

Microsoft has developed a variety of software products, including operating system, office software, compilers and interpreters of programming languages, and Internet client programs, such as web browsers and email clients.

Some of these products are very successful, while others are not. As a result, people have found a rule: although the early version of Microsoft's products is often full of loopholes and lack of functions, which is worse than the competitors' products, the later version will make rapid progress and be popular. Today, many products of Microsoft dominate the market in different fields.

Microsoft has spent a lot of energy on reusable projects in marketing and product development, and tried to further combine its products to provide users with a consistent development environment.

Microsoft is also trying to expand the famous brand of Windows to other fields, such as Windows CE (Microsoft's embedded operating system for computer products other than personal computers) developed for PDA (abbreviation of Personal Digital Assistant, meaning "Personal Digital Assistant"), and the source of CE abbreviation is Customer Embedded. Compact version, consumer electronics products, etc. ) and "Windows Support" smartphone products, as well as the recently developed Windows Vista.

The main advantage of Microsoft products is versatility, which allows users to benefit from the so-called network effect. For example, the widespread use of Microsoft Office makes Microsoft Office files become the standard of document processing format, so almost all business users cannot do without Microsoft Office.

Microsoft's software is also designed to be easy to set up, allowing enterprises to hire low-cost and low-standard system administrators. Supporters of Microsoft believe that the result is a lower "total cost of ownership".

Microsoft software also represents a "safe" choice for IT managers when purchasing software systems, because the universality of Microsoft software enables them to say that they are following a widely accepted choice. This is a particularly attractive benefit for it managers who lack professional knowledge.

Brief introduction of Microsoft in China

Microsoft Asia research institute

1998165438+1On October 5th, Microsoft established Microsoft China Research Institute in Beijing, and was upgraded to Microsoft Asia Research Institute on October 6th, 2006. Microsoft Research Asia is the second basic scientific research institution established by Microsoft overseas. This strategic investment shows Microsoft's great confidence in the economic development potential of China and the whole Asia-Pacific region, and its solemn commitment to the development of information industry in this region.

The mission of Microsoft Research Institute is to enable future computers to see, listen, learn and communicate with human beings in natural language. On this basis, Microsoft Research Asia is laying a solid foundation for scientific research to meet the demand for computing technology in Asia, especially in China, in the next 5- 10 years. At the same time, Microsoft Research Asia also actively cooperates with the scientific and technological industrial policies of Asian governments, and makes its due contribution to promoting the development of information industry and Internet technology in Asia and promoting technological innovation and progress in the whole region.

Microsoft China Technology Center

Microsoft China Technology Center was established in September 2003. This is a pioneering cooperation between Microsoft's latest technology and the global local information industry. Microsoft China Technology Center is committed to introducing Microsoft's advanced technology and sharing it with domestic partners, supporting domestic partners to develop internationally competitive software and hardware products and solutions, aiming to grow together with China's information industry.

Microsoft China Technology Center pursues technical cooperation and innovation, not aiming at turnover and commercial profit. Since its establishment, it has been pursuing its own commitment to provide users and partners with a brand-new technical experience and cooperative development environment to meet their requirements for hardware facilities and technical support in the development process. We hope that through our services, partners and enterprise users can use Microsoft's platform to meet their business growth needs and realize business value.

Microsoft global technical support center

Microsoft Asia-Pacific Global Technical Support Center is a newly established organization in August 2007, which was formed by the merger of Microsoft Greater China and Asia-Pacific Global Technical Support Center. 1997165438+10. In October, Microsoft invested in the establishment of Microsoft Greater China Technical Support Center (the predecessor of Microsoft Greater China Global Technical Support Center) in Shanghai, which was the first global center established in China by Fortune 500 companies. 200 1, 1, the center was upgraded to Microsoft global technology center again, and began to serve corporate users, partners and individual users around the world. In June, 2005, it increased its investment in the customer service department, which formally joined the global technical support center. In 2006, he won the China Customer Care Award in the field of information technology. In September 2006, the Asia-Pacific customer service and international outsourcing team won the COPC certification for the third time. In August 2007, Microsoft Greater China Global Technical Support Center won the 2007 China IT Service Software System Support and Maintenance Performance Model Award.

Microsoft Asia Institute of Engineering

The goal is to turn technological achievements into breakthroughs, and then establish a technology and product R&D center with first-class R&D capability and profound market insight in China. On June 4th, 2003, Microsoft established Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute in Beijing, China.

Rooted in China and based on Microsoft's global technology innovation strategy, in three years, Microsoft Institute of Engineering in Asia has completed the transformation from technology to the role of developing core products for global users. At the same time, a powerful R&D team composed of more than 400 passionate, innovative and experienced domestic and foreign excellent software engineers has been successfully established, which has become an important force in Microsoft's global technological innovation and product R&D strategy. At present, Microsoft Asia Institute of Engineering has established four research and development directions: Internet technology, mobile technology, digital entertainment and emerging markets. Microsoft Asia Institute of Engineering Shanghai Branch was established in March 2005, mainly for Microsoft users around the world, engaged in the development of Windows servers and development tools. In March 2006, Microsoft Asia Institute of Engineering established the Mobile Technology Center (MTC) to take the lead in formulating Microsoft's mobile technology market strategy in China, and jointly develop technical standards, software and hardware products and services related to mobile communication with China operators and OEM partners.

The problem of piracy faced by Microsoft

Due to the high price, genuine systems cost thousands of dollars, and many users are reluctant to buy genuine Microsoft products, but use pirated ones. Although Microsoft has adopted many technologies to prevent piracy, including requiring users to "activate" products online, piracy is still very popular in Chinese mainland, because hackers can crack Microsoft's anti-piracy technology. Considering that the price of pirated products is extremely low (RMB 3~ 10 yuan), even if the products cannot be updated, users are unwilling to use genuine products. Microsoft didn't fully investigate the average spending power of consumers in China, so it didn't cater to the appetite of users in China in price positioning. Therefore, it is difficult for Microsoft to promote genuine products in Chinese mainland. Although China is trying its best to crack down on piracy, think about it. After all, it is a big country with hundreds of millions of people. However, we still need to support genuine Microsoft Windows.

Nowadays, ghost system is becoming more and more popular because of its advantages of fast speed, more optimization and more software. I wonder how Microsoft will handle it.

We all know that piracy should be resisted, but we should not criticize it blindly. We all know that demand determines the market. After comparing the comprehensive attributes of security and price of piracy, many of us choose to use piracy. Why? This shows that the original did not bring the value consistent with its price! We don't need to sympathize with the treatment of an arrogant enterprise that doesn't consider China's national conditions. Everyone who respects others will always respect others. If Microsoft can respect American consumers more, I think piracy will disappear without being attacked by others. On the contrary, it is useless to fight.