Over the decades, Microsoft has revolutionized the workplace, bringing both personal computing and cloud computing to the masses. As it turns 50, critics warn that artificial intelligence could further the tech giant’s dominance.
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In offices, educational institutions, and even in agriculture, Microsoft technologies are used everywhere. The Windows operating system made PCs accessible to everyone; the Office suite became synonymous with office work; and during the pandemic, the Microsoft Teams messenger became a lifeline for businesses and educational institutions around the world. Today, the audience of the communications platform numbers more than 320 million daily users, and remote work is becoming not the exception, but the norm.
Today, April 4, 2025, Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, celebrates its 50th anniversary. The company is at a turning point: the recognized leader in the field of operating systems, development tools, and cloud computing has a chance to break ahead in the field of AI.
The history of Microsoft began in 1975 in a garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Two college friends, programmers Bill Gates, then 19, and Paul Allen, 22, dreamed of making computers accessible to everyone. A major milestone in the company’s history was its partnership with IBM in 1980, which resulted in Microsoft MS-DOS becoming the standard operating system in the PC industry. A few years later, the company released Windows, laying the foundation for its future dominance in the software market.
Over the past five decades, the company has continually adapted to technological changes and expanded its business into new areas. Today, it is not just a software company, but a global technology empire with a presence in almost every sector. As of March 2025, Microsoft is the third most valuable company in the world, after Apple and Nvidia.
Despite its enormous market power, Microsoft is at the dawn of a new era: the era of AI. The company is investing billions in research, building massive data centers around the world, and developing its own AI chips. The driving force behind the transformation is CEO Satya Nadella, who took the helm in 2014 and made two strategic decisions that changed Microsoft’s future. First, he shifted the company’s focus to cloud computing, revolutionizing its business model and revenue sources. Second, he made AI the core of Microsoft’s long-term model, being one of the first to recognize the technology’s enormous potential.
The company has launched a host of AI-powered products, such as Copilot, that now perform everyday tasks such as composing emails, analyzing data, and generating creative content. Microsoft says AI is designed to boost productivity, but there are concerns that it will lead to massive job losses. For many businesses and governments, Microsoft has become virtually indispensable: in Germany alone, its software runs in 96% of government agencies, and 69% use its data centers. Companies depend on the IT giant’s cloud infrastructure, security services, and AI tools; government agencies store sensitive data in Microsoft data centers and use its software for administrative tasks. At least 1.4 billion PCs worldwide run Windows.
But this deep integration has a downside: for many, abandoning Microsoft products is virtually impossible, which experts call the lock-in effect. Once an organization has deployed an ecosystem of Microsoft products, switching to another platform is extremely difficult and expensive. This dependence strengthens Microsoft’s dominance in the market, and competitors have virtually no opportunity to counter it with their products. Governments around the world are wondering whether one company can have such strong control over critical digital infrastructure. Experts are confident that restrictive measures alone will not weaken Microsoft’s power; alternatives to the tech giant must be supported.
Today, Microsoft’s global expansion shows no signs of slowing down, as the company aims to further expand its AI product portfolio. It wants to integrate AI models into everyday applications, thereby strengthening its cloud business. Microsoft is also thinking ahead: in February, it unveiled Majorana 1, the world’s first quantum chip, which the company claims will help create “quantum computers that can solve significant industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.”