Microsoft history By Juan C Salcedo Apr 4, 1975 it was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque. Jan 1, 1979 the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington Aug 25, 1980 The first operating system publicly released by the company was a variant of Unix May 19, 1981 Microsoft's first wildly successful operating system was MS-DOS or Microsoft Disk Operating System, which Microsoft wrote for IBM May 2, 1983 Microsoft Mouse was released Jul 11, 1983 Microsoft Press, a book publishing division Nov 20, 1985 Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows (Windows 1.0) May 19, 1986 the company went public Nov 19, 1986 Microsoft Works, saw its first release as an application for the Apple Macintosh Jan 13, 1988 Microsoft also continued its trend of rebranding products from other companies, such as Microsoft SQL Server Aug 8, 1989 Microsoft would introduce its most successful office product, Microsoft Office. May 22, 1990 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. May 16, 1991 Bill Gates announced that the OS/2 partnership was over May 19, 1991 marked the founding of Microsoft Research Mar 19, 1992 Microsoft released Windows 3.1 Oct 19, 1992 Windows for Workgroups 3.1 was released with integrated networking abilities Nov 19, 1992 Microsoft released the first version of their popular database software Microsoft Acce May 19, 1993 Windows had become the most widely used GUI operating system in the world. Jul 19, 1993 marked the end of a five-year copyright infringement legal case brought by Apple Computer Mar 19, 1995 The company released Microsoft Bob, a graphical user interface designed for novice computer users Aug 19, 1995 Internet Explorer was first included in the Windows 95 Plus! Pack Aug 24, 1995 Microsoft released Microsoft Windows 95 was released without a web browser as Microsoft had not yet developed one. Aug 24, 1995 launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), May 19, 1996 the release of Windows NT 4.0, which brought the Windows 95 GUI and Windows NT kernel together. Dec 19, 1997 , Microsoft Office 97 as well as Internet Explorer 4.0 were released and by agreement with Apple Computer, Internet Explorer was bundled with the Apple Macintosh operating system as well as with Windows Jul 20, 1998 The company released an update to the consumer version of Windows, Windows 98 Feb 17, 2000 Microsoft released an update to its business line of software in Windows 2000. Jun 15, 2000 , the company released a new version of its hand-held operating system, Windows CE 3.0. May 19, 2001 Microsoft released Windows XP and Office XP