Microsoft is celebrating its Golden Jubilee and on this occasion, we decided to look back upon five of the most significant apps that the tech giant has come out with in every decade since its inception. From Word to Teams, let’s take a recap at how Microsoft changed the digital world, one iconic app at a time.
1. Microsoft Word (1983)
Microsoft Word 1.0 running on MS DOS (Image Credit: The Digital Antiquarian)
Let’s start off by talking about one of the oldest and still most used program by Microsoft, MS Word. This word processing tool was originally shipped as Multi-Tool Word for MS DOS in 1983 . It’s key features back then was that you could control it with a mouse . MS Word 1.0 could display bold, italics and underlined text. Sad to say, the original version didn’t turn out to be the hit we know it today.
In fact, it wasn’t until the early 90s when it started gaining traction. By then, it was renamed to MS Word. This is one of the most popular word processing tool in the world period. Microsoft kept improving it in the later versions, and it became quite popular in offices and households as well. As of today, the MS Word is a part of Microsoft Office 365 suite.
2. MS Paint (1985)
Image Credit: Nicola D’Agostino/ Flickr
MS Word might be my first program that I used on Windows, but MS Paint is where I spent most of my childhood. This popular program came out in 1985 as PC Paintbrush for MS DOS, with only monochrome color support and limited tools. Like Word, it was expanded upon in later releases, and became a big hit when it was shipped with Windows 95.
MS Paint was the go-to program for most kids , before the advent of internet and games. It allowed you to create simple sketches with its variety of tools, and even draw or perform basic edits on images. It still remains one of the highlights of Windows platform. One that is often looked upon fondly by the now grown up kids of the 90s.
3. Internet Explorer (1995)
Internet Explorer version 1.0 (Image Credit: Gazette Review)
Stepping into the World Wide Web in the late 90s, we have the infamous Internet Explorer. It was based on the source code of Mosaic, which was an even early internet browser. The first version of Internet Explorer shipped as part of the Internet Jumpstart Kit in the Microsoft Plus! Pack for Windows 95, which, of course, came in the year 1995.
Since it came bundled with Windows , the browser became an instant hit, peaking around 2003. That is, until the release of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Both of them offered far better browsing performance over what Microsoft had offered, and by the time they fixed the issues, it was already too late. Chrome significantly took over Internet Explorer by the turn of the 2000s.
Soon after, Internet Explorer was succeeded by Microsoft Edge. Internet Explorer couldn’t manage to make a dent in the industry, but it did bless us with hilarious memes. Some of which still manage to get a chuckle out of me even to this day. In the third decade of Microsoft, the company also launched Outlook, which was a personal email client and Windows Movie Maker.
4. Skype (Acquired in 2011)
Skype on Windows 7 (Image Credit: Microsoft)
We’re cheating here a little bit since Skype isn’t something Microsoft developed, but an app which they acquired. It was a popular solution for making calls over the internet , a novelty back in the day . Later on, it also added support for placing video calls over the internet as well. This seems like a pretty common thing today, but it was revolutionary back in the 2000s.
Even before Microsoft’s acquisition, Skype had over 500 million monthly active users as it connected people across the globe. This number grew to a billion users after the acquisition in 2011. But Microsoft failed to innovate it any further, and other apps started to catch up. I fondly remember not wanting to use it because it had too many steps. Compare it to WhatsApp, where placing calls feels seamless.
So by 2020, Skype was on a downward trajectory, and Microsoft didn’t do much to save it either. While the app had a major cultural significance over the history of the internet, it couldn’t manage to make it big. Microsoft has announced that they will be retiring Skype in May 2025. So by the time you’re reading this, this once popular video calling app might have become a relic of the past.
5. Microsoft Teams (2017)
Microsoft Teams on Windows 11
Microsoft Teams is the successor to Skype. The app came to being as a competitor to Slack in 2017, but little did the folks at Microsoft knew that they unintentionally dropped an alternative to Skype. It also allowed you to do voice and video calls over the internet, but it was more oriented towards business and enterprise users. It offered a collaborative environment, and offered hundreds of users to join in on a call at the same time.
The app became a necessity during the COVID-19 period, when everyone was restricted to their homes. At this time, Teams saw monumental growth, and even after the pandemic, became a popular option among users. As of May 2024, Microsoft Teams has a little over 300 million monthly active users . I am sure that number has only increased this year.
With this, we come to the end of our list. From Word to Teams, Microsoft has had a rollercoaster of a ride over the past 50 years. And I bet if it wasn’t for these programs, the company would have been in a completely different place right now. It will be interesting to keep tabs on the company and see what new innovations they bring with the turn of another decade.
With over 4 year of experience under the belt, I cover all facets of consumer tech, from smartphones to other consumer electronics, our favorite social media apps, as well as the growing realm of AI and LLMs. As an Apps and AI writer app Beebom, I provide my expertise in all these areas, weaving stories that help you get familiar with the tech around you. But you will find me playing NYT daily puzzles in my free time.
Add new comment
Name
Email ID
Δ
Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary at a time when technology is about to reshape the world. Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in a small rented office in Albuquerque, Microsoft is now the world’s second most valuable company. Over the past 50 years, the software giant has faced many challenges, antitrust lawsuits, and fierce competition, but can it stay ahead in the next five decades? To understand what the next 50 years hold for Microsoft, read on.
What Microsoft’s History Tells Us About the Next 50 Years
Microsoft started as a small company in 1975, developing software for the Altair 8800 — an early personal computer. By 1980, Microsoft needed an operating system to power the IBM PC. So, it acquired 86-DOS and modified it to MS-DOS. MS-DOS became massively popular and by 1985, Microsoft launched its first graphical operating system called Windows 1.0.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates in 1981 | Image Credit: Microsoft
10 years later, in 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95 which was a huge commercial success. For the first time, Microsoft introduced the Start menu, Taskbar, and Windows Explorer. They are still part of the latest Windows 11 OS, even after 30 years.
Following that, Microsoft launched Windows XP, Xbox, and the Office suite, which expanded its footprint in the PC space. Now, 50 years later, Windows has a desktop market share of over 70% , maintaining its position as the dominant OS. In these last 50 years, Microsoft has diversified its business to cloud computing (Azure), gaming (Xbox), productivity (Microsoft 365), and its next big thing – Copilot AI.
Beyond being a consumer-centric company, Microsoft has become a massive corporation that provides its services to enterprise customers as well. In fact, today, Microsoft’s revenue mostly comes from Azure’s cloud infrastructure and AI services. Meanwhile, the remaining revenue comes from Microsoft 365, Windows, and Xbox.
The only major space where Microsoft doesn’t have a footprint is mobile. Windows Phone exited the smartphone OS market in 2020. Bill Gates recently admitted that losing the phone market to Android was his “greatest mistake”. Besides that, Microsoft in 2025 announced that it’s quitting the HoloLens hardware business completely, ending its Mixed Reality vision.
Microsoft’s Role in AGI Development
When Satya Nadella took over Microsoft as the CEO in 2014, the Redmond giant was not in good shape. Nadella ended several struggling projects like the Windows Phone. And focused on its server businesses like Azure cloud, AI, enterprise solutions, and developer relations. As a result, Microsoft has become the world’s second most valuable company by market cap, joining the $3 trillion club in market valuation recently.
The credit largely goes to Satya Nadella for transforming Microsoft in the last decade. Many credit Nadella’s leadership for striking a deal with OpenAI back in 2019. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI to support the development of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) — an AI system capable of matching human capabilities.
Image Credit: OpenAI via YouTube
So far, Microsoft has invested close to $14 billion in OpenAI and has a 49% ownership stake in the company. This has put Microsoft at the forefront of AI development. The partnership allows Microsoft to exclusively access OpenAI’s latest breakthroughs and AI models. It can also commercialize OpenAI’s models. Thus, allowing the company to integrate the latest AI models into its products. Like Copilot, Microsoft 365, and Azure AI for enterprise offerings.
Not only that, the terms of the partnership say that OpenAI must use Microsoft Azure for all cloud infrastructure needs. Only recently, Microsoft relented and allowed OpenAI to purchase cloud resources from Oracle. Some reports also say that OpenAI has to share 75% of its revenue with Microsoft until the investment is recovered.
Image Credit: Beebom
It means that Microsoft has a huge financial influence over OpenAI’s operations. And in the future, Microsoft will gradually recover its investment while having access to the latest AI technologies. Having said that, the partnership also says that once OpenAI achieves AGI internally, Microsoft will lose access to OpenAI’s technologies.
To keep its lead in the AI race, Microsoft is putting its AI division in order. Microsoft is reportedly developing internal reasoning models to reduce its over-reliance on OpenAI. The company has already trained smaller models such as Phi for everyday use and Muse AI for generating gaming visuals.
Microsoft is also focusing on open-source models including China’s DeepSeek which shocked the world with its efficient training methods. Overall, Microsoft is currently a key player in AI development, leveraging its partnership with OpenAI and developing in-house AI models as well. Until AGI is achieved, expect Microsoft to continue its lead in the AI race.
Microsoft’s Next 50 Years: Future of Windows
While Windows doesn’t directly contribute major revenue for Microsoft through licensing, the platform serves as the foundational bedrock, powering its software, cloud, and enterprise services. On the consumer side, Windows 11 is the latest desktop OS by Microsoft, and it’s evolving into a great operating system. Microsoft is slowly but gradually improving the design language of Windows 11 to offer a consistent PC experience.
Image Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft is putting effort into making Windows 11 a more modular OS . We have already seen that Windows 11’s various elements such as the desktop shell, Taskbar, Notification Center, etc. are being decoupled from explorer.exe to make each component modular and updatable. Microsoft has already showcased Windows 10X (now canceled) which was based on a highly-modular Windows Core OS .
In the future, we might see different flavors of Windows running on various form factors such as foldable devices, tablets, and more. It’s being said that Windows 12 should come with a floating Taskbar and a new modular desktop interface, optimized for touchscreen devices.
Apart from UI/UX improvements, Microsoft is also adding a lot of AI features to Windows 11. Besides current AI features on Windows 11 such as Recall, Semantic Search, Cocreator, etc., the future of Windows lies in Agentic AI -driven integration. Copilot on Windows will be able to perform actions in real-time using the vision capability. Users will be able to voice chat with Copilot and ask it to perform actions on their Windows PCs.
To enable this, Microsoft is already preparing agentic frameworks for Windows like OmniParser, Magentic-One, AutoGen, and Windows Agent Arena to handle complex tasks. While some companies are bringing AI agents to the web browser, Microsoft is taking it to the OS level so that it can perform both system-level and web-based actions . Basically, in the future, you can expect that Windows will become an AI-driven operating system.
To leverage AI for gaming, Microsoft has already showcased its Muse AI model that can generate game visuals and controller actions. It’s quite possible that Generative AI will be tightly integrated into Xbox to enable features such as AI-assisted gameplay, environment generation, personalized experiences, and more.
Microsoft’s In-house Chips and Quantum Computing
Besides software, on the hardware side too, Microsoft is preparing for the future and reducing its reliance on Nvidia . In 2023, Microsoft announced its custom Azure Maia 100 chip for AI workloads. While Google has its own TPU for AI workloads, and Nvidia continues to sell GPUs for AI training and inference, Microsoft needed an in-house chip , hence, Maia 100 was born. It’s an AI accelerator that can run large-scale AI workloads on Azure’s cloud.
The company also announced an Arm-based Azure Cobalt CPU for general-purpose compute workloads, just like Google’s Axion CPU. Since Microsoft has a major cloud business, the chip is going to reduce datacenter costs for Microsoft and cut down dependency on external vendors like Nvidia and Intel.
Majorana 1 | Image Credit: Microsoft
Finally, in February 2025, Microsoft announced its first breakthrough in quantum computing . The company unveiled Majorana 1, a quantum computing chip for quantum computers. Unlike traditional qubits, Majorana 1 uses topological qubits which are said to be more stable and less prone to errors.
For this, Microsoft invented a new class of materials called “topoconductors”. Microsoft claims that Majorana 1 can scale up to 1 million qubits on a single chip. Overall, Microsoft is doing pioneering work in the field of quantum computing while also developing in-house chips to reduce reliance on external vendors.
And as a software-first company, Microsoft is entering the AI era with high expectations, which has the potential to transform its entire ecosystem including Windows, Xbox, Azure, and Microsoft 365. In the next 50 years, we expect Microsoft to lead the industry with fresh innovations, but can it outpace Google and Apple? Only time will tell.
Passionate about Windows, ChromeOS, Android, security and privacy issues. Have a penchant to solve everyday computing problems.
Add new comment
Name
Email ID
Δ
