How Microsoft became the biggest company in the world

One of the tech gods, Paul Allen, just recently passed away. For those who are unfamiliar with the name, he is one of the two people responsible for building what could be the biggest tech company of our generation – Microsoft.

It was Allen and his business partner and friend, Bill Gates who took their humble inventions (an interpreter made by Allen and a simulator created by Gates) to the 1975 MITS event and showed the world what it could do. After rave reviews by fellow technophiles, Microsoft was conceived with Gates being named as its CEO.

The first of Microsoft’s stops on its path to worldwide dominance was IBM. For five years, Allen and Gates developed an operating system for IBM computers. The commission Microsoft took in served to fund future projects.

After another five years, Microsoft provided another operating system for IBM, calling it the OS/2. The OS/2 would be the upgrade IBM users had been waiting.

However, Microsoft created another operating system that was very similar to the OS/2 and kept it a secret from IBM. This new OS would be compatible with any other computer that needed an OS.

IBM would fight Microsoft in court over the rights to the new OS, but the latter would find another loophole that would seal their destiny. Microsoft simply changed the OS name to Windows.

Much to IBM’s dismay, Microsoft released the new operating system which was a massive hit in the tech industry. After several legal battles, to settle things, Microsoft changed the OS name to Windows. The rest, as they say, was history.

The name's Steve Sorensen. I received my business graduate degree from Iowa State University. For the longest time, I've been fascinated by the huge and often meteoric growth in net worth of some of the world's most successful companies and have dedicated a portion of my time to tracing the stories of these companies and pointing out the roots of their success. For more articles like this, visit this page.