About Microsoft

SOME FACTS ABOUT MICROSOFT:

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Important Dates:

Date Event

1975 Microsoft founded
Jan. 1, 1979 Microsoft moves from Albuquerque,
New Mexico to Bellevue, Washington
June 25, 1981 Microsoft incorporates
Aug. 12, 1981 IBM introduces its personal computer
with Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0
Feb. 26, 1986 Microsoft moves to corporate campus in Redmond,
Washington
March 13, 1986 Microsoft stock goes public
Aug. 1, 1989 Microsoft introduces earliest version of
Office suite of productivity applications
May 22, 1990 Microsoft launches Windows 3.0
Aug. 24, 1995 Microsoft launches Windows 95
Dec. 7, 1995 Bill Gates outlines Microsoft's commitment to
supporting and enhancing the Internet
June 25, 1998 Microsoft launches Windows 98
Jan. 13, 2000 Steve Ballmer named president and chief executive
officer for Microsoft
Feb. 17, 2000 Microsoft launches Windows 2000
June 22, 2000 Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer outline
Microsoft's .NET strategy for Web services
May 31, 2001 Microsoft launches Office XP
Oct. 25, 2001 Microsoft launches Windows XP
Jan. 15, 2002 Bill Gates outlines Microsoft's commitment
to Trustworthy Computing
Nov. 7, 2002 Microsoft and partners launch Tablet PC
Jan. 16, 2003 Microsoft declares annual dividend
April 24, 2003 Microsoft launches Windows Server 2003
Oct. 21, 2003 Microsoft launches Microsoft Office System
July 20, 2004 Microsoft announces plans to return up to $75 billion
to shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks
June 15, 2006 Microsoft announces that Bill Gates will transition out
of a day-to-day role in the company in July 2008,
Ray Ozzie is named chief software architect
and Craig Mundie chief research and strategy officer
July 20, 2006 Microsoft announces a new $20 billion tender offer
and authorizes an additional share-repurchase
program of up to $20 billion over five years
Jan. 30, 2007 Microsoft launches Windows Vista and the 2007
Microsoft Office System to consumers worldwide
Feb. 27, 2008 Microsoft launches Windows Server 2008,
SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008
June 27, 2008 Bill Gates transitions from his day-to-day role at
Microsoft to spend more time on his work at
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Board of Directors:

Steven A. Ballmer Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corporation
James I. Cash Jr., Ph.D. James E. Robison Professor & Senior Associate Dean,
Emeritus, Harvard Business School
Dina Dublon Former Chief Financial Officer, JPMorgan Chase
William H. Gates III Chairman, Microsoft Corporation
Raymond V. Gilmartin Former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer,
Merck & Co., Inc.
Reed Hastings Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix, Inc.
Maria M. Klawe President, Harvey Mudd College
David F. Marquardt General Partner, August Capital
Charles H. Noski Former Vice Chairman, AT&T Corporation
Dr. Helmut Panke Former Chairman of the Board of Management, BMW AG


Operation Centers:

Role Location

Licensing, Manufacturing, Operations and Logistics Dublin, Ireland
Manufacturing Humacao, Puerto Rico, USA
Licensing and Operations Reno, Nevada, USA
Operations and Logistics Singapore


Headcount & Revenue Growth:

Fiscal Year Ending Head Count Net Revenue (US$) Growth Net Income (US$) Growth

June 30, 2008 91,259 $60.42B 18% $17.68B 26%

June 30, 2007 78,565 $51.12B 15% $14.07B 12%

June 30, 2006 71,172 $44.28B 11% $12.60B 3%

June 30, 2005 61,000 $39.79B 8% $12.25B 50%
June 30, 2004 57,086 $36.84B 14% $8.17B 8%
June 30, 2003 54,468 $32.19B 13% $7.53B 29%
June 30, 2002 50,621 $28.37B 12% $5.35B -28%
June 30, 2001 48,030 $25.30B 10% $7.35B -22%
June 30, 2000 39,170 $22.96B 16% $9.42B 21%
June 30, 1999 31,575 $19.75B 29% $7.79B 73%

Employment Information:

Current Employment Headcount

Location Employees

Worldwide 95,029

USA 56,552

Puget Sound (Washington State) 40,999

Reported Gender Breakout (USA):

Gender Employees Percentage

Male 42,367 74.9%
Female 14,185 25.1%

Reported Age Breakout (USA):

Age Range Employees Percentage

29 or Under 10,044 17.8%
30-39 25,650 45.47%
40+ 20,858 36.9%

Functional Breakout (Worldwide):

Role Employees

Business Group 45,909

Sales & Marketing Support Group 39,140

Operations Group 9,979

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GOOGLE WAVE

GOOGLE TO COME BACK WITH A WAVE AND THAT'S GOOGLE WAVE...
--------- About Google Wave --------
Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.Here's a preview of just some of the aspects of this new tool.
What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document.
People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared.

Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live.

With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Some key technologies in Google Wave

Real-time collaboration

Concurrency control technology lets all people on a wave edit rich media at the same time.

Watch the tech video

Natural language tools

Server-based models provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction.

Watch the tech video

Extending Google Wave

Embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets, thanks to Google Wave APIs.

GOOGLE GETs COMPETITION WITH MICROSOFT's BING

Dear Readers,

Microsoft Rolls Out Bing, Early

http://www.bing.com/

PLUS

Google Gets Some Competition

Finding is better than searching ! !!

Microsoft officially rolled out its Bing search engine on Monday, two days ahead of its scheduled June 3 release.

The software giant provided a sneak peak at Bing last week at the D: All Things Digital (D7) conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

"Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don't do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find," Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, said at the time. "When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web."

If this morning's headlines are any indication, it appears that people want to use the Web to access porn. Several blogs reported that turning off Bing's "safe search" component and searching for "porn" in the video search box turns up thumbnail search results depicting graphic sex acts. But doing a search for "porn" on Google and Yahoo will also produce plenty of Not Safe for Work on-screen content.

PCMag software analyst Michael Muchmore evaluated Bing last week and found that while the service is far from a Google killer, its slick interface and tailored search results definitely give the search engine giant a run for its money.

Bing returns Web results in a manner similar to Google or Yahoo, but it also has built-in helper tools for searches that aren't just about finding Web pages, particularly when it comes to travel, shopping, health, and local info.

For example, Microsoft utilized its purchase of Farecast to provide detailed travel search results like grids of what dates are the cheapest to travel, maps showing how far you can fly for below a certain price, and graphs of price changes over time.

Searching for a medical condition, meanwhile, will produce a "Bing Health Article" from a certified source like the Mayo Clinic. That page, hosted on Bing, will then provide more detailed information about the condition for which you are searching, as well as a "When to seek medical advice" section.

The main area in which Bing trailed Google, Muchmore found, was in the timeliness of its news. Google produced stories within 5 to 10 minutes while Bing often took up to 20 minutes to display the same article.

Four year jail sentence for webcam hacker

A 47 year old computer technician has been sentenced to four years in jail after being found guilty of using malware to gain control of webcams and to take pictures of the webcam's owners without their knowledge or consent.

The Cypriot man, who has not been named, used a Trojan program to control a 17 year old's webcam and take illicit pictures of her. He then attempted to blackmail the victim, saying he would make the pictures public unless she posed naked for him in front of her webcam. The victim, whose machine became infected after she opened an email attachment, responded to the blackmail demands by going to the local police.

The man was initially arrested in 2005, the same year in which two Spanish men were arrested in separate incidents for similar crimes. One of them, a computer science student, was ordered to pay 3,000 euros compensation to his victim, and a 1,000 euro fine.
Source:The Register

International cyber crime group charged

International cyber crime group charged

Eleven people, including three U.S. citizens, have been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges relating to identity theft and hacking. The suspects were allegedly involved in the theft of more than 40 million debit and credit card accounts in the last three years, including the high-profile case in which the retail giant TJX claimed that over 46.5 million credit cards had been stolen.

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey commented that the group "used sophisticated computer hacking techniques, breaching security systems and installing programs that gathered enormous qunatities of personal financial data, which they then allegedly sold to others or used themselves." They identified vulnerable commercial networks and collected credit card numbers, PIN numbers and other account data using network sniffers. Some of the information was then sold on via servers in Eastern Europe and the United States.

Albert Gonzalez, one of the defendants, has been charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy. Two other Miami men, Christopher Scott and Damon Patrick Toey were also charged. The remaining members of the group (one of whom is only known by an online pseudonym), from countries which include Estonia, Ukraine, the People's Republic of China and Belarus, have been indicted for running and international distribution ring for stolen debit and credit card accounts. If Gonzalez is convicted, he could be sentenced to life in jail.

Mukasey characterized the case as "the single largest and most complex identity theft case ever charged in this country." He also commented that the outcome "shows that, with the cooperation of our law enforcement partners around the world, we can identify, charge and apprehend even the most sophisticated international computer hackers".