How Microsoft Rewrote Digital History

💻 Today it’s hard to imagine life without the Start button, Excel spreadsheets, and the familiar blue screen (yes, that one). Microsoft became not just a company — it turned into a symbol of the entire digital era. The one that made computers mainstream, the office digital, and viruses — almost legendary.

How It All Began: BASIC, IBM, and the First Step Toward Monopoly

In 1975, two young enthusiasts — Bill Gates and Paul Allen — founded Microsoft. Their first creation was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, one of the first personal computers.
The turning point came in 1980, when IBM asked Microsoft to create an operating system. That’s how MS-DOS was born — simple, command-based, and terribly inconvenient by today’s standards, but it laid the foundation for a computer empire.

MS-DOS became the standard for IBM and all PC clones. Microsoft quietly but firmly entered every office and almost every home.

The Interface Revolution: Windows and the Visual Boom

In 1985, Windows appeared — a graphical shell for MS-DOS. Back then, it was almost magical: you could click a mouse instead of typing commands by hand.
And though the idea of “windows” was borrowed from Apple, Microsoft made it mainstream. Windows 3.0 in 1990 became a hit, and Windows 95 — a cultural phenomenon. The computer suddenly stopped being a tool for engineers and became a friendly household companion with a Start button.

Excel, Word, and Office: When Work Became “The Office”

Before Microsoft Office, office work was a quest: one program for text, another for tables, and a third for slides. Microsoft decided to unite them all, creating an ecosystem where everything looked and worked the same.
Excel, Word, and PowerPoint became classics. And Office 97 crowned Microsoft as the king of the business world.
Fun fact: Excel first appeared not on Windows, but on Macintosh — in 1985! But it was Windows that turned it into a legend.

Viruses: The Price of Success

When your operating system runs on millions of computers — trouble is inevitable. Windows became not only the most popular but also the most attacked OS.
In the ’90s and early 2000s, viruses like ILOVEYOU and Code Red terrified users. Microsoft had to admit: security wasn’t optional, it was survival.
The company launched the Security Development Lifecycle program, built protection into Windows XP SP2, and later released Windows Defender. Thus began the “secure Windows” era — though, let’s be honest, it’s still not perfect.

Court, Monopoly, and a New Era

Success brought not only money but also problems. Microsoft was accused of monopoly practices: Windows forced Internet Explorer on users and squeezed out competitors.
In 1998, the company faced an antitrust lawsuit, and in 2001, the court found it guilty. The giant wasn’t split up, but Microsoft had to act more modestly — at least for a while.

Clouds, AI, and a Second Wind

With Satya Nadella’s arrival in 2014, Microsoft was reborn. Instead of fighting over Windows, it focused on cloud, AI, and enterprise solutions.
Today Azure rivals Amazon, Microsoft 365 powers millions of companies, and GitHub and OpenAI made Microsoft cool again — this time for developers and AI enthusiasts.

Windows is now just one cog in a much larger machine. Microsoft has become an ecosystem that spans everything — from Xbox to the cloud, from Linux to Android.

💡 Legacy

Microsoft didn’t just change the market — it changed how we interact with machines. It made the computer less scary and more human. Yes, there were mistakes, viruses, and monopolies — but who among us is flawless?

Today, Microsoft is more than a corporation. It’s a whole chapter of human history — written in blue font on a gray screen.