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The dawn of MS‑DOS In June 1980, Gates and Allen hire Gates’ former Harvard classmate Steve Ballmer to help run the company. The next month, IBM approaches Microsoft about a project code-named "Chess." In response, Microsoft focuses on a new operating system—the software that manages, or runs, the computer hardware and also serves to bridge the gap between the computer hardware and programs, such as a word processor. It’s the foundation on which computer programs can run. They name their new
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•April, 1987 Microsoft Windows version 2.0 released
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•August 1, 1989 Microsoft introduces earliest version of Office suite of productivity applications
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•May 22, 1990 Microsoft launches Microsoft 3.0
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•August 24, 1995 Microsoft launches Windows 95
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•June 25, 1998 Microsoft launches Windows 98
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•Feb. 17, 2000 Microsoft launches Windows 2000
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•May 31, 2001 Microsoft launches Office XP.
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•Oct. 25, 2001 Microsoft launches Windows XP
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•Nov. 15, 2001 Microsoft launches Xbox
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•Nov. 22, 2005 Microsoft launches Xbox 360
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•June 15, 2010 Microsoft launches general availability of Office 2010
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•Nov. 10, 2010 Microsoft launches Windows Phone 7
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•June 28, 2011 Microsoft launches Office 365
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•June 3, 2009 Microsoft launches Bing search engine
