Microsoft turns 35: Best, worst, most notable moments

Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975.

Worst server glitch

As if users weren't annoyed enough about Windows Genuine Advantage, from Aug. 24 to 25, 2007, the antipiracy validation system accused thousands of paying Windows XP and Vista customers of being software pirates. According to Microsoft, the WGA servers went on the fritz, and users were tagged as running non-genuine versions of Windows. Even worse, Vista systems were stripped of important features, such as the Aero interface. The meltdown lasted for 19 hours.

Most embarrassing product glitch

When you use formulas in Excel, you expect them to do the math correctly -- after all, what is a spreadsheet for? But in September 2007, an Excel 2007 bug had Microsoft execs red-faced with embarrassment because of an apparent inability to do simple multiplication. In some specific cases, if a formula resulted in the number 65,535 or 65,536, Excel would instead display the result 100,000.

The problem, according to Microsoft, was not that Excel flunked math; it was a display issue. Excel actually performed and stored the calculation properly, the company claimed, but displayed the wrong results. Microsoft fixed the bug, and Excel has known its multiplication tables -- and how to display them -- ever since.

Smallest annual revenue

In 1975, its first year in business, Microsoft recorded a total income of $16,005, all from the BASIC program it wrote for the MITS Altair 8800 computer. The total did not include $14,405 that Microsoft was still owed for the final quarter of 1975.

Largest annual revenue

In its 2008 fiscal year, Microsoft raked in $60.42 billion in revenue, a whopping 18% increase over what it had earned the previous year.

Worst year-over-year performance

Microsoft has turned a profit every year since its founding, and it enjoyed year-over-year increases in revenue and profits every year ... until 2009. For its 2009 fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2009, the company reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3% decline from fiscal year 2008. Its operating income was $20.36 billion, down 9% from 2008; net income was $14.57 billion, down 18%; and earnings per share was $1.62, down 13%.

Most annoying productivity tool

In November 1996, Microsoft launched Office 97, which featured the Office Assistant, an animated character in the form of a paper clip nicknamed Clippy. (There were other characters as well, but Clippy was the default and the most annoying.)

The Office Assistant was supposed to help people get work done more easily by popping onto the screen and offering tips from the application's Help system related to the task being performed. It was intrusive, intensely annoying and widely reviled.

Even people within Microsoft hated Clippy. Steven Sinofsky, now president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, wrote this in his blog: "the Office Assistant was famously named TFC during development. The 'C' stood for clown. I will let your active imagination figure out what the TF stood for."

In fact, Microsoft used the widespread hatred of Clippy to its advantage by launching an anti-Clippy Web site as a way to promote Office 97's successor, Office XP, because Office XP had the Office Assistant turned off by default. The site received some 22 million page views, according to USA Today, and allowed users to do things such as shoot rubber bands at the hated animated character.

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