Over
Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of approximately 228,000 passionate employees worldwide. Get must-have apps to enhance your gaming experience with Twitch, Nitrado, Air Server, and Dolby Atmos. 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 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 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. Following media reports about PRISM, NSA's massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. 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. Amy Coleman, Microsoft's executive vice president and chief people officer, said the layoffs were not the result of employees being replaced by AI, but acknowledged that AI is changing how work is done. In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company's entire workforce. Microsoft is one of only two U.S.-based companies that have a prime credit rating of AAA.
In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio. Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of PCs and the Xbox brand of video game consoles, the latter including the Xbox network. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems and the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, which most notably include the Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet editor, and PowerPoint presentation program. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system and office software suite markets since the 1990s. A Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies, and one of the most valuable brands globally. The company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows and has since expanded into areas such as Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and more.
Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide). It is estimated to encompass over 8 million ft2 (750,000 m2) of office space and 30,000–40,000 employees. The group, accessed "a very small percentage" of Microsoft corporate email accounts, which also included members of its senior leadership team and employees in its cybersecurity and legal teams.
The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. This inquiry was part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to enforce guidelines on the power of major tech companies. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant.
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. 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. 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. In July 2025, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs, cutting approximately 9,000 employees in its largest workforce reduction in over two years.
The announcement came a day after hosting a Sting concert for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos, Switzerland. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off 10,000 employees. 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). December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge [Legacy] browser project in favor of the "New Edge" browser project, featuring a Chromium based backend. In the same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. In February 2018, Microsoft ceased notification support for its Windows Phone devices which effectively ended firmware updates for the discontinued devices.
Access your work with a mobile experience designed for flexibility.
In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company's gaming sales. 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. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. 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.
