 Microsoft Microsoft Corporation Slash Mock Question Mark K.R. Question Mark Yes. Question Mark for Slash Abbreviated as MS is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best-known software products are the Microsoft Windows Lines of Operating Systems, the Microsoft Office Suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge Web Browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox Video Game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. As of 2016, it is the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software. Microsoft was founded by Dill Gates as a personal talent on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell basic interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering and subsequent rise in its share price created 3 billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by their acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011. As of 2015, Microsoft is market dominant in the IBM PC-compatible operating system market and the Office software suite market. Although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, the company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops and servers, including Internet Search with Bing the Digital Services Market through MS and Mixed Reality HoloLens Cloud Computing Azure and Software Development Visual Studio. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates SEO in 2000 and later envisioned A devices and services strategy. This began with the acquisition of Danger Incorporated in 2008, centering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft surface line of tablet computers and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division. Since Salina Della took over as CEO in 2014, the company is scaled back on hardware and has instead focused on cloud computing, the move that helped the company shares reach its highest value since December 1999.