Microsoft, Apple and the Quest for AI Dominance

in 1975 two childhood friends from Seattle converted a computer programming language for use on a PC and went on to become a two of the richest men in the world yet in doing so they would also unleash a monopoly that a judge would once order to disband you won't believe the lengths this company is willing to go to this is the story of Microsoft Microsoft's acquisition

of Activision is about to change everything about the way you game it was announced back in January 2022 that Microsoft was looking to purchase Activision for 68.7 billion dollars and for those of you who don't know Activision may be best known for its parent company Activision Blizzard although they're also responsible for such popular games as Call of Duty Microsoft insists that this move is meant to

benefit Gamers and that you'll be seeing more games available across more devices a better flexibility in payment methods and more variety for those of us who prefer Mobile gaming among other supposed perks it all sounds promising right well there's a reason to believe that this acquisition isn't all it's cracked up to be but we'll be getting into some of those reasons soon it's strange to see

where the company is now considering how they started out in the beginning there were just two boys learning how to convert basic for use on an early PC Paul Allen was the dreamer while Bill Gates was the more business-minded pragmatist between the two of them he was saying well imagine what it's like to run a Fortune 500 company I'm thinking I I have no idea between

the years of 1975 and 1980 the two of them mostly worked on refining basic and a couple of other programming languages but they found their first big break when the International Business Machines Corporation or IBM asked them to produce the operating system for their first PC the IBM PC they decided to go about it the easy way by modifying an operating system they had purchased off

another company and renaming it msdos or the Microsoft Disk Operating System msdos was released with the IBM PC see in 1981 and from that point forward most PC manufacturers credited their operating system to msdos Microsoft had hit it big and by the early 1990s msdos had sold over 100 million copies defeating rival operating systems like CPM and IBM os2 Microsoft released their first version of Windows

in 1985 but it was the third version of the operating system released in 1990 that really changed the game by 1993 Windows 3.0 and its subsequent versions were selling at a rate of 1 million copies per month and nearly 90 percent of the world's PCS ran on a Microsoft operating system Microsoft officially became a publicly owned Corporation in 1986 and by the mid-1990s they were one

of the most profitable companies in American history history they consistently brought in a profit of 25 cents on every sales dollar and in 1996 they topped two billion dollars in net income for the first time by 2009 they had grown to 14 billion dollars but things behind the scenes weren't always quite as rosy as they would appear Microsoft seemed to take forever to get into internet

software they didn't bother to until Netscape Communications Corp launched Navigator in 1994 a web browser program that made browsing the web a whole lot easier then all of a sudden in 1995 Microsoft released Internet Explorer a free web browser that they would convince computer makers and internet service providers to distribute exclusively and if that weren't frustrating enough for customers by 1996 they were building Explorer with

Windows OS and even taking steps toward integrating explore with Windows we can imagine this made for quite the headache for their customers but if you wanted to avoid the headache of missing our next video then we'd recommend taking this moment to subscribe to our Channel but going back to what we were saying about Microsoft pushing Internet Explorer this inspired Netscape to sue Microsoft for violating their

1995 consent decree causing the justice department to open a broad investigation into Microsoft the next thing Microsoft knew they were being accused by the US government of having illegally acquired their Monopoly position in the PC industry the first trial lasted 30 months during which Bill Gates argued the software industry which contributed over 100 billion dollars to the National economy last year but it all came to

an end in 1999 when a judge found Microsoft in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered the company to break up an appeals court overturn this order in 2001 but they still found Microsoft guilty of trying to illegally maintain a monopoly in the end a settlement was reached but this settlement has been widely criticized for not doing enough to stop Microsoft's monopolistic practices in March

2004 our old friends the European Union or EU issued Microsoft a 794 million dollar fine giving them 120 days to release the server information as well as 90 days to produce a version of Windows without Windows Media Player this was actually the biggest find in the eu's history at the time in February 2008 the EU upped that fine an additional 1.44 billion dollars for failure to

comply and it wasn't only their legal problems causing the company either there were a few years where Microsoft just couldn't seem to keep up with the competition like with their 2006 release of the Zune it's called a Zune it's what everybody's listening to on Earth nowadays which just couldn't stand up to Apple's iPod and was ultimately discontinued in 2011. and although the release of Windows 7

in 2009 was a major hit their search engine live search just couldn't seem to get off the ground Microsoft hoped to turn this around when they launched Bing in 2009 and in doing so Microsoft also offered to buy Yahoo in 2008 for 44.6 billion dollars this proposal was rejected at first but negotiations continued and an agreement was reached in 2009 Yahoo could use Bing as their

premium website and they could handle premium advertisements for Microsoft's website Microsoft saw purchased Skype in 2011 for 8.5 billion dollars adding Skype to Xbox Outlook and windows smartphones in 2016 Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for 26.8 billion dollars but through all of this there was a lot of drama behind the scenes Paul Allen had already left the company in 1983 due to tensions between him and Bill but

he stayed on the board of directors until 2000 the same year that Bill Gates stepped down from his role as CEO before Gates left he passed on the torch to Steve Ballmer an old friend of his from Harvard in 2006 Gates handed the title of Chief software architect to Ray Aussie a developer on the computer networking package Lotus Notes so this would be the first time

since I was 17 that I won't have my full-time Microsoft job Gates remained as chairman of the board until 2000 20 when he stepped down to focus more on being a philanthropist there were some who thought that losing Bill might spell the end for Microsoft and yet they managed to see a 44 jump in profits during the height of the pandemic in 2022 profits fell more

this considering their previous acquisition of zenimax media led to redfall and Starfield being taken off of rival consoles perhaps our biggest concern at this point in time is that Microsoft might do something similar with Call of Duty the UK CMA has warned that making Call of Duty exclusive could alter the future of gaming and that this acquisition might even make games more expensive while making the

games themselves lower quality as a result of cloud gaming although it may be worth mentioning that Xbox has offered PlayStation a 10-year deal to keep Call of Duty on their system as of November 2022 yet as the EU pointed out when they issued Microsoft and antitrust warning in February 2023 Microsoft could always be incentivized to keep the game away from their Rivals to which Microsoft responded

by saying that they were listening carefully to the European commission's concerns and are confident we can address them it's hard to say what the future for Microsoft holds at this point but seeing as their shares have been down by 22 percent this last year they're sure to have some tough decisions ahead Microsoft might have started out from humble beginnings but between the years worth of Acquisitions

and antitrust violations they become anything but what are your thoughts on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision do you see at having any major effects and was there anything else from the story you were surprised by don't forget to make your thoughts heard down in the comment section