Microsoft BV

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEX: 4338) is a multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, Financial Times Global 500 ranks it as the third largest company in the world for the first quarter of 2010. 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 Windows line of operating systems.The company's initial public stock offering (IPO) was in 1986; the ensuing rise of the company's stock price has made four billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.

Throughout its history the company has been the target of criticism such as monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, privacy concerns and restrictions in the use of software, and misrepresentation in advertising. The U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission have ruled against Microsoft for antitrust violations. Microsoft also has a mixed record on its environmental impact over time while having a favorable record on diversity within the company. Known for its interviewing process with off-the-wall questions such as "Why is a manhole cover round?", Microsoft gives customer support over Usenet newsgroups and the World Wide Web and awards Microsoft MVP status to volunteers who are deemed helpful in assisting the company's customers