Background on MicrosoftMicrosoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It came to dominate the operating system market for personal computers with MS -DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's initial public offering in 1986 and the subsequent rise in its stock price created approximately three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified away from the operating systems market and has made numerous corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date. Since 2013, Microsoft has been market dominant in both the IBM PC compatible operating system market and office software suites (the latter with Microsoft Office). The company also produces a wide range of other desktop and server software and is active in areas such as Internet search (with Bing), the video game industry (with the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles and the upcoming Xbox One console ), the digital services market (via MSN) and mobile phones (via the Windows Phone operating system). In June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer manufacturing market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. IMicrosoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and services. Its best-known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office office suite, and the Internet Explorer web browser. Its flagship hardware products are...paper securities......financial bonds. For the first time in 20 years Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in first-quarter 2011 quarterly profits and revenue due to a slowdown in PC sales and continued huge losses in Microsoft's Online Services division (which contains its search engine Bing). Microsoft's profits were $5.2 billion, while Apple Inc.'s profits were $6 billion, on revenues of $14.5 billion and $24.7 billion, respectively. Microsoft's Online Services division has been continuously loss-making since 2006, and in the first quarter of 2011 it lost $726 million. This follows a loss of $2.5 billion for the year 2010. On July 20, 2012, Microsoft reported its first quarterly loss ever, despite reporting record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year. Microsoft reported a net loss of $492 million; the 2007 acquisition of an advertising company for a sum of $6.2 billion and the problems associated with it were cited as the cause.