Share And Earn! Click Despite the fact that Macintosh sales are increasing, Microsoft still dominates the computer industry.
But, because of this dominance of Microsoft, many things have been written about Microsoft, about it’s history, products, and even about it’s founder, the one and only Bill Gates. However if you want to know even more about Microsoft here’s some 10 interesting and fun facts about Microsoft that you probably didn’t knew and heard of before.
1. First use of the Microsoft term
The word Microsoft was first used by Bill Gates in a letter to Paul Allen back in 1975. But, Bill initially wrote it as Micro-Soft.
However, the Microsoft company ( without a hypen ) was registered in November 1976 in New Mexico, the city where Paul Allen and Gates were working for their first big customer, MITS. Microsoft only moved to Redmond, Washington only in 1986.
The logo of Microsoft also suffered modifications in time. The “Pac Man” Logo was created in 1987.
2. Brian Eno wrote The Microsoft Sound
Musician Brian Eno was the one that created the sound that can be heard when Windows 95 is booting, ” The Microsoft Sound”.
A very influential musician, Brian worked with David Bowie and U2, and he thinks it was funny to create such a sort music like The Microsoft Sound.
“Start Me Up” from Rolling Stones is also used in Windows 95, and Brian Eno also wrote the music for the Spore computer game.
3. Pizza is the favorite food of Microsoft
Althought Microsoft cannot be compared with Google regarding food and, Microsoft offers free drinks. More than 23 million drinks are offered for free in the Microsoft campus each year.
It seams that the favorite drinks are milk and orange juice. Free candy can also be found on the Microsoft campus shuttle.
And regarding food, the 35 Microsoft cafeterias serve more than 37,000 people each day and pizza is the favorite and most popular item on the menu.
4. Microsoft uses codenames
Microsoft has been using code names even from the release of their first operating systems, and a long list of these code names can be found in Wikipedia. It seams that Bill Gates wanted to release Windows under the name of Interface Manager but it was convinced by an employee to change it to Windows.
Among the previous codes used by Microsoft we can mention Longhorn, Lone Star and Vienna. I think you might also want to add Mojave to the code name lists, but that’s actually part of a campaign from Microsoft, a marketing exercise that was created to “fight against” the poor PR of Vista.
5. The average Softie
A Microsoft employee, or Softie as they use to call themselves, is a male, 38 years old, average salary at $106.000 per year.
Microsoft currently has more than 88,000 employees which work at the Microsoft campus, and more of 50,00 are in the US. Microsoft employees are 76% males.
6. Microsoft celebrates anniversaries with M&M candy.
All companies have their own tradition and of course Microsoft is not an exception. It became a habit for Microsoft employees to celebrate anniversaries with M&M candy.
Each anniversary, a Microsoft Employee should provide one pound of M&M’s for each of year they spent working for Microsoft. This means that Bill Gates has to come up with at least 35 pounds of M&M candy.
7. Microsoft’s Stock has split 9 times
Since the company went public in March 1986, their stock has been split 9 times. This is a practice that is done when the price of a share becomes too high.
8 Microsoft owns a massive art collection
Microsoft is one of the biggest corporate art collectors, that owns more than 5,000 pieces of contemporary art like sculptures, works on paper, paintings, photos, multimedia, etc. Microsoft collects art from local artists and newcomers.
9. Microsoft asks weird interview questions
Microsoft has a strange reputation in the world, that is due mainly because of the weird questions being asked during a job interview. The most popular questions is ” Why is a manhole cover round?” We don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s surely true that Microsoft uses a very strange interviewing process.
10. Microsoft Owns more than 10,000 patents
Microsoft owns around 10,000 patents and they keeping filing around 3,000 each year, and Microsoft is in the top 5 patent owners in the United States.
Although a big percentage of the patents are related to software elements, the patent with number 5,000 and 10,000 were consumer friendly ideas. The 5,000 patent was for the Xbox 360 tech that allows people to “watch” a video game from a remote location. The patent number 10,000 was for the Microsoft Surface.
Microsoft also offers rewards for it’s employees when a patent is successful.They offer a $1,500 bonus.
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