MICROSOFT COMPANY

         Paul Allen and Bill Gates founded the Company in 1975.

          Microsoft is best-known American company involved in software production. Microsoft’s wealth and power is growing uрfor years. It is a giant company. Microsoft’s $25 billion market value tops that of Ford, General Motors.

         Some time ago, Microsoft dominated the PC market with its MS-DOS operating system, the basic software that let the computer understand your commands and carry them out, appeared in the beginning of 80s. MS-DOS ran on 90 percent of the worlds IBM and IBM-clone computers. Then, Microsoft has extended that presence with releasing of Windows, which is probably the most important and popular operating system in the World. And now it dominates the market.

       Firstly, Microsoft released Windows ’95 in 1995. It was a graphics interface environment that ran on top of MS-DOS and replaced DOS in future versions. Then, Microsoft released Windows ’98, Windows NT, Windows Millennium, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.      

        Microsoft also supplies about 50 percent of the world’s soft­ware applications. Among them, there are three well-known Office Packs; they are also called Microsoft Office programs such as Excel (spreadsheets), Microsoft Word (word proces­sing), Access (data bases) and Outlook Express (e-mail). There were releases in 1997, 2000, and 2002, when appeared Mi­crosoft Office XP. Microsoft is also in the market of networ­king, multimedia and even books. And as an early supporter of the Macintosh computer, Microsoft virtually owns the Mac application market.

       It has been calculated that Microsoft controls 80-85 % of the entire PC software industry. The company has hundreds of products and thousands of employees, making it one of the largest companies. Many of the company’s shareholders are now millionaires and a few including Bill Gates and Paul Allen are billionaires. Microsoft is no doubt the fastest growing com­pany in the PC software industry.

QUESTIONS: 

1.  Who founded the Company?

2.  When was Microsoft founded?

3.  What does the company produce?

4.  What was the first Microsoft operating system that dom­inated the PC market?

5.  How many Windows operating systems did Microsoft release?

6.  Is it a rich company?

7.  Does the Company dominate the PC market?

VOCABULARY:

to found — основать

to involve — касаться, затрагивать

software — программное обеспечение, программы

wealth — стоимость

PC market — рынок ПК персональных компьютеров

MS-DOS operating system — операционная система МС-ДОС

to carry out — выполнять

to extend — расширяться, увеличиваться

to release — выпускать

graphics interface — графический интерфейс

to supply — поставлять, снабжать

application — приложение

spreadsheets — программа табличных вычислений

word processing — текстовый редактор

networking — организация / создание сетей; объединение в сеть; подключение к сети

multimedia — мультимедиа (использующий различные средства информации)

virtually — виртуально

entire — целый, весь

employee — служащий

shareholder — акционер, пайщик, владелец / держатель акций

doubt — сомнение