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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_ref-Kotaku:_Bethesda_Part_2_84-0] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_ref-Shacknews:_Bethesda_85-0] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_ref-Patent_Arcade:_Uniloc_92-0] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Scott-Baron] | [TOKENS: 338] |
Contents Hayden Scott-Baron Hayden Scott-Baron (born 6 April 1980), known as Dock, is an English professional illustrator and graphic designer. In 2001 he joined up with other comic creators Laura Watton, Sam Brown/Subi and Foxy in founding one of the largest UK Manga Studios, Sweatdrop Studios. Information He is also a prominent games developer, and established Starfruit Games in 2010. Hayden has written several 'how-to' books on the topic of drawing manga, including Digital Manga Techniques[citation needed] and Manga Clip Art.[citation needed] He currently lives in Cambridge, UK, and regularly attends UK anime conventions, representing Sweatdrop Studios. Hayden was awarded second-prize in the 'Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga: UK & Ireland #3' for a comic named 'Two for Joy'[citation needed]. In December 2009 Dock became the artist for Minecraft, working alongside the sole developer, Markus Persson. He designed some of the first characters in the game, as well as an unused logo. However he soon left in February 2010 due to work-related issues. His art style and character designs were significantly distinct from what Minecraft would eventually use. In January 2010 he released an iPhone game called Tumbledrop. Tumbledrop was nominated as a finalist for 'Technical Achievement' award at IGF Mobile 2010[citation needed]. Published games Published works References External links This profile of a British comics creator, writer, or artist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. This biographical article about a graphic designer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_ref-VG247:_Putt-Putt_96-0] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios#cite_ref-Gamasutra:_Uniloc_91-0] | [TOKENS: 3550] |
Contents Mojang Studios Mojang AB, trading as Mojang Studios, is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. A first-party developer for Xbox Game Studios, the studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent video game designer Markus Persson in 2009 as Mojang Specifications for Minecraft's development. The studio inherited its name from another video game venture Persson had left two years prior. Following the game's initial release, Persson, in conjunction with Jakob Porsér, incorporated the business in late 2010, and they hired Carl Manneh as the company's chief executive officer. Other early hires included Daniel Kaplan and Jens Bergensten. Minecraft became highly successful, giving Mojang sustained growth. With a desire to move on from the game, Persson offered to sell his share in Mojang, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014. Persson, Porsér, and Manneh subsequently left Mojang. In May 2020, Mojang was rebranded as Mojang Studios. As of 2021, the company employs approximately 600 people and has additional locations in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered. Kayleen Walters is the studio head. Apart from Minecraft, Mojang Studios has developed Caller's Bane, Crown and Council, and further games in the Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, and the cancelled Minecraft Earth. It also released smaller games as part of game jams organised by Humble Bundle and published the externally developed Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. History Mojang Studios was founded by Markus Persson, a Swedish independent video game designer and programmer, in 2009. He had gained interest in video games at an early age, playing The Bard's Tale and several pirated games on his father's Commodore 128 home computer, and learned to programme at age eight with help from his sister. Because he was a "loner" in school, he spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. Following his graduation and a few years of working as a web developer, Persson created Wurm Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with his colleague Rolf Jansson in 2003. They used the name "Mojang Specifications" during the development and, as the game started turning a profit, incorporated the company Mojang Specifications AB (an aktiebolag) in 2007. The name is derived from the Swedish word mojäng (Swedish pronunciation: [mʊˈjɛŋː]; lit. 'gadget'). Persson left the project in the same year and wished to reuse the name, so Jansson renamed the company Onetoofree AB and later Code Club AB. Meanwhile, Persson had joined Midas, later known as King.com, where he developed 25–30 games. He departed the company when he was barred from creating games in his free time. In May 2009, Persson began working on a clone of Infiniminer, a game developed by Zachtronics and released earlier that year. Persson reused assets and parts of the engine code from an earlier personal project and released the first alpha version of the game, now titled Minecraft, on 17 May 2009, followed by the first commercial version on 13 June. He reused the name "Mojang Specifications" for this release, registering a sole proprietorship with this name on 18 June. In less than a month, Minecraft had generated enough revenue for Persson to take time off his day job, which he was able to quit entirely by May 2010. As all sales were processed through the game's website, he did not have to split income with third parties. The payment services provider PayPal temporarily disabled his account when it suspected fraud. In September 2010, Persson travelled to Bellevue, Washington, to the offices of video game company Valve, where he took part in a programming exercise and met with Gabe Newell, before being offered a job at the company. He turned down the offer and instead contacted Jakob Porsér, a former colleague from King.com, to ask for aid in establishing a business out of Mojang Specifications. Porsér quickly quit his job, and the pair incorporated Mojang AB on 17 September. While Persson continued working on Minecraft, Porsér would develop Scrolls, a digital collectable card game. Wishing to focus on game development, they hired Carl Manneh, a manager at jAlbum, Persson's former employer, as chief executive officer. Other significant early hires included Daniel Kaplan as business developer, Markus Toivonen as art director, and Jens Bergensten as lead programmer. In January 2011, Minecraft reached one million registered accounts and ten million six months thereafter. The continued success led Mojang to start the development of a new version for mobile devices. Due to the incompatibility of the game's Java-based framework with mobile devices, this version was programmed in C++ instead. Another version, initially developed for Xbox 360, was outsourced to Scotland-based developer 4J Studios, which also used C++. Scrolls was announced by Mojang in March 2011. The studio's attempt to trademark the game's name resulted in a dispute with ZeniMax Media, which cited similarities between the game's name and that of the ZeniMax-owned The Elder Scrolls series. Kaplan stated in May 2011 that, due to many such requests in the past, Mojang was planning to publish or co-publish games from other indie game studios. Its first, Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio, was announced in August. An early version of the game was made available in December 2011, with the full game released in February 2016 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows. A multiplayer-focused spin-off, Cobalt WASD, was also developed by Oxeye Game Studio and released by Mojang for Windows in November 2017 after some time in early access. For the full release of Minecraft, Mojang held Minecon, a dedicated convention, in Las Vegas on 18–19 November 2011, with Minecraft formally being released during a presentation on the first day. Thereafter, Minecon was turned into an annual event. Following Minecraft's full release, Persson transferred his role as lead designer for the game to Bergensten in December 2011. Around this time, Manneh had discussion with a plethora of venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but turned all of them down as the company did not require any funds. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, Inc., offered to privately invest in Mojang in 2011 but was turned down as well. At the time, the studio ruled out being sold or becoming a public company to maintain its independence, which was said to have heavily contributed to Minecraft's success. By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. In 2013, it released an education-focused version of Minecraft for Raspberry Pi devices, and—after the exclusivity clause penned with Microsoft over the availability of the game's console edition on Microsoft's platforms had expired—announced editions of the game for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. In October 2013, Jonas Mårtensson, formerly of gambling company Betsson, was hired as Mojang's vice-president. That year, Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. Persson, exhausted from the pressure of being the owner of Minecraft, published a tweet in June 2014, asking whether anyone would be willing to buy his share in Mojang. Several parties expressed interest in this offer, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, urged Microsoft's newly appointed chief executive Satya Nadella to purchase Mojang to set out "a pretty bold vision" for Microsoft's gaming business. Furthermore, the company had $2.5 billion in offshore bank accounts that it could not bring back to the United States without paying repatriation taxes. Nadella separately stated the possible use of Minecraft with the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality device, to have been a major factor in pursuing the acquisition. The company first approached Mojang regarding a potential acquisition in June 2014, making its first offer shortly thereafter. Mojang subsequently hired advisers from JPMorgan Chase. Microsoft's agreement to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion was announced on 15 September 2014. Persson, Porsér and Manneh were the only shareholders at this time, of whom Persson owned 71% of shares. The acquisition was finalised on 6 November and Mojang became part of the Microsoft Studios branch. As part of the transaction, Persson received $1.8 billion, while Porsér and Manneh got $300 million and $100 million, respectively. All three subsequently left Mojang and Mårtensson succeeded Manneh. According to Bergensten, the change in ownership went against the studio's independence-focused culture. Many employees were wary about the uncertainties they could face after the acquisition, and some staffers cried at the offices. Everyone who remained with the company for six months thereafter was awarded a bonus of roughly $300,000 (after taxes), deducted from Persson's share. Under the oversight of Microsoft's Matt Booty, Mojang's integration was minimal, leaving its operations independent but backed by Microsoft's financial and technical capabilities. This approach shaped how Microsoft would acquire other gaming companies. Scrolls was released out-of-beta in December 2014 and development of further content ceased in 2015. Also in December 2014, Mojang and Telltale Games jointly announced a partnership in which the latter would develop Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic, narrative-driven game set in the Minecraft universe. In April 2016, Mojang released Crown and Council, a game entirely developed by artist Henrik Pettersson (who had been hired in August 2011), for free for Windows. An update in January 2017 introduced Linux and macOS versions. Mojang discontinued the online services for Scrolls in February 2018 and re-released the game under a free-to-play model and with the name Caller's Bane in June. Aiming to expand the Minecraft franchise with further games, Mojang developed two spin-offs: Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler, and Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game in the vein of Pokémon Go. They were announced in September 2018 and May 2019, respectively. Minecraft Classic, the original browser-based version of Minecraft, was re-released for free on its ten-year anniversary in May 2019. By this time, Minecraft had sold 147 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Persson was explicitly excluded from the anniversary's festivities due to several controversial statements of his involving transphobia and other issues; an update for Minecraft released the March before also removed several references to Persson. On 17 May 2020, Minecraft's eleventh anniversary, Mojang announced its rebranding to Mojang Studios, aiming to reflect its multi-studio structure, and introduced a new logo. The design was created at the agency Bold under the creative direction of Oliver Helfrich. Minecraft Dungeons was released later that month for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In June 2022, the studio announced the action-strategy game Minecraft Legends. Helen Chiang, the six-year head of studio for Mojang Studios, acceded to Xbox Game Studios in December 2023 and was replaced by Åsa Bredin in the same role. When Bredin stepped down in February 2025 to focus on personal goals outside the company, Kayleen Walters was appointed in her place, in addition to Amy Stillion as chief of staff. Games developed Mojang partnered with Humble Bundle in 2012 to launch Mojam, a game jam event to raise money for charity, as part of which Mojang developed the shoot 'em up mini-game Catacomb Snatch. The including bundle was sold 81,575 times, raising $458,248.99. The following year, Mojang developed three mini-games for Mojam 2. The studio also participated in Humble Bundle's Games Against Ebola game jam in 2014 with three further mini-games. In 2011, Persson and Kaplan envisioned a hybrid of Minecraft and Lego bricks and agreed with the Lego Group to develop the game as Brickcraft, codenamed Rex Kwon Do (in reference to the film Napoleon Dynamite). The game has also been described as a first-person shooter. Mojang hired two new programmers to work on the game, while a prototype was created by Persson. However, Mojang cancelled the project after six months. Upon announcing the cancellation in July 2012, Persson stated that the move was performed so that Mojang could focus on the games it wholly owned. Daniel Mathiasen, a Lego Group employee at the time, later blamed the cancellation on a series of legal hurdles that the Lego Group had put in place to protect the product's family-friendly image. Kaplan lamented that the staff at Mojang had felt more like consultants on the project, rather than its designers. The Lego Group also considered acquiring Mojang at this point but later decided against doing so as they had not foreseen that Minecraft would become as popular as it would at one point be. In March 2012, Persson revealed that he would be designing a sandbox space trading and combat simulator in the likes of Elite. Titled 0x10c, it was to be set in the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD in a parallel universe. The project was shelved by August 2013, with Persson citing a lack of interest and a creative block. Minecraft Earth was made available as an early-access game in November 2019 for Android and iOS. In January 2021, it was announced that the game would be withdrawn from sale in June that year, with all player data deleted in July. Mojang Studios cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as primary reason for the game's closure, as its effects conflicted with the game's concept. Games published Legal disputes In August 2011, after Mojang had attempted to trademark the word "Scrolls" for their game, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks, issued a cease and desist letter, claiming that Scrolls infringed on ZeniMax's "The Elder Scrolls" trademark, that Mojang could not use the name, and that ZeniMax would sue the studio over the word's usage. Persson offered to give up the trademark and give Scrolls a subtitle. However, as Mojang ignored the cease and desist letter, ZeniMax filed the lawsuit in September. Bethesda's Pete Hines stated that Bethesda was not responsible for the lawsuit, rather the issue was centred around "lawyers who understand it". Mojang won an interim injunction in October, the ruling being that Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls were too easy to differentiate, though ZeniMax could still appeal the ruling. In March 2012, Mojang and ZeniMax settled, with all "Scrolls" trademarks and trademark applications being transferred to ZeniMax, who would in turn licence the name to Mojang for use with Scrolls and add-on content, but not for sequels or any other games with similar names. On 20 July 2012, Uniloc, a company specialising in digital rights management technologies, filed a lawsuit against Mojang, stating that the licence verification system in Minecraft's Android version infringed on one of Uniloc's patents. The case was Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Mojang AB and was filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In response to hate mail, Uniloc founder Ric Richardson denied his involvement, claiming to have only filed the patent. The patent was invalidated in March 2016. In July 2013, the minigolf chain Putt-Putt issued a cease and desist letter against Mojang and Don Mattrick (who was previously affiliated with Minecraft's Xbox 360 version but had since joined Zynga), alleging that they infringed on its "Putt-Putt" trademark. Attached to the letter, which Persson shared on Twitter, was a Google Search screenshot showing videos of user-created maps using the name. Alex Chapman, Mojang's lawyer, stated "I think there is clearly a misunderstanding here as to what Minecraft actually is. It's a game that, among other things, allows people to build things. Mojang doesn't control what users build and Mojang doesn't control the content of the videos users make. Suing Mojang for what people do using Minecraft is like suing Microsoft for what people do using Word." References External links |
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Contents Template talk:Microsoft Semi-protected edit request on 25 June 2019 Gabe (Gabriel Aul) has left Microsoft and joined Facebook, please remove him on the "Corporate VPs" list 80.6.209.87 (talk) 14:13, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply] |
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Contents Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, computer programmer, and investor. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Allen was also known for discovering the wrecks of various famous warships, like the IJN Musashi and USS Indianapolis, and was ranked as one of the richest people in American history by Forbes, with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death in October 2018. Allen quit from day-to-day work at Microsoft in early 1983 after a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, remaining on its board as vice-chairman. He and his sister, Jody Allen, founded Vulcan Inc. in 1986, a privately held company that managed his business and philanthropic efforts. At the time of his death, he had a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio, including technology and media companies, scientific research, real estate holdings, private space flight ventures and stakes in other sectors. He owned the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association, and was part-owner of the Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer. Under the Allen Estate's helm, the Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII, LX, and made it to two other Super Bowls (XLIX, XL). In 2000 he resigned from his position on Microsoft's board and assumed the post of senior strategy advisor to the company's management team. Allen founded the Allen Institutes for Brain Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Cell Science, as well as companies like Stratolaunch Systems and Apex Learning. He gave more than $2 billion to causes such as education, wildlife and environmental conservation, the arts, healthcare and community services. In 2004, he funded the first crewed private spaceplane with SpaceShipOne. He received numerous awards and honors and was listed among the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007 and 2008. Allen was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2009. He died of septic shock related to cancer on October 15, 2018, at the age of 65. Shortly after his death, in April 2019, the Allen-funded Stratolaunch first flew and became the largest aircraft in history by wingspan. Early life Allen was born on January 21, 1953, in Seattle, Washington, to Kenneth Sam Allen (a librarian) and Edna Faye (née Gardner) Allen (a fourth-grade teacher). From 1965 to 1971 he attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle where he befriended Bill Gates, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakeside's Teletype terminals to develop their programming skills on several time-sharing computer systems. They also used the laboratory of the Computer Science Department of the University of Washington for personal research and computer programming until they were banned in 1971 for abusing their privileges. Gates and Allen joined with Ric Weiland and Gates' childhood best friend and first collaborator, Kent Evans, to form the Lakeside Programming Club and find bugs in Computer Center Corporation's software, in exchange for extra computer time. In 1972, after Evans' sudden death in a mountain climbing accident, Gates turned to Allen for help finishing an automated class scheduling system for Lakeside. They then formed Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. According to Allen, he and Gates would go dumpster diving during their teenage years for computer program code. Allen achieved a perfect SAT score of 1600 and went to Washington State University, where he joined the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity. He dropped out of college after two years to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston near Harvard University where Gates was enrolled. Allen convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard in order to focus on Microsoft. Microsoft Allen and Gates formed Microsoft in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and began marketing a BASIC programming language interpreter, with their first employee being high school friend and collaborator Ric Weiland. Allen came up with the name of "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software". Microsoft committed to delivering a disk operating system (DOS) to IBM for the original IBM PC in 1980, although they had not yet developed one, and Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to purchase QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) written by Tim Paterson who was employed at Seattle Computer Products. As a result of this transaction, Microsoft secured a contract to supply the DOS that ran on IBM's PC line, which opened the door to Allen's and Gates' wealth and success. The company restructured on June 25, 1981, to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington (with a further change of its name to "Microsoft Corporation, Inc."). As part of the restructuring, Gates became president of the company and chairman of the board, and Allen became executive vice president and vice chairman. The relationship between Allen and Gates became strained as they argued even over small things. Allen effectively left Microsoft in 1982 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, though he remained on the board of directors as vice chairman. Gates reportedly asked Allen to give him some of his shares to compensate for the higher amount of work that Gates was doing. According to Allen, Gates said that he "did almost everything on BASIC" and the company should be split 60–40 in his favor. Allen agreed to this arrangement, which Gates later renegotiated to 64–36. In 1983, Gates tried to buy Allen out at $5 per share, but Allen refused and left the company with his shares intact; this made him a billionaire when Microsoft went public, with 25.2% ownership of the company. Gates later repaired his relationship with Allen, and the two men donated $2.2 million to their childhood school Lakeside in 1986. They remained friends for the rest of Allen's life. Allen resigned from his position on the Microsoft board of directors on November 9, 2000, but he remained as a senior strategy advisor to the company's executives. In January 2014, he still held 100 million shares of Microsoft. Businesses and investments Allen confirmed that he was the sole investor behind aerospace engineer and entrepreneur Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft on October 4, 2004. The craft was developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Allen and Rutan's aviation company, Scaled Composites. SpaceShipOne climbed to an altitude of 367,442 feet (111,996 m) over the Mojave Air and Space Port and was the first privately funded effort to successfully put a civilian in suborbital space. It won the Ansari X Prize competition and received the $10 million prize. On December 13, 2011, Allen announced the creation of Stratolaunch Systems, based at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The Stratolaunch is a proposed orbital launch system consisting of a dual-bodied, six-engine jet aircraft, capable of carrying a rocket to high altitude; the rocket would then separate from its carrier aircraft and fire its own engines to complete its climb into orbit. If successful, this project would be the first wholly privately funded space transport system. Stratolaunch, which is partnering with Orbital ATK and Scaled Composites, is intended to launch in inclement weather, fly without worrying about the availability of launch pads and to operate from different locations. Stratolaunch plans to ultimately host six to ten missions per year. On April 13, 2015, Vulcan Aerospace was announced. It is the company within Allen's Vulcan Inc. that plans and executes projects to shift how the world conceptualizes space travel through cost reduction and on-demand access. On April 13, 2019, the Stratolaunch aircraft made its maiden flight, reaching 15,000 ft (4,600 m) and 165 kn (306 km/h) in a 2 h 29 min flight. Stratolaunch CEO Jean Floyd offered this comment: "We dedicate this day to the man who inspired us all to strive for ways to empower the world's problem-solvers, Paul Allen. Without a doubt, he would have been exceptionally proud to see his aircraft take flight". Upon its flight, the airplane became the largest in history by wingspan. As of the end of May 2019, Stratolaunch Systems Corporation had ceased operations. Allen's Vulcan Real Estate division offers development and portfolio management services, and was involved in the redevelopment of the South Lake Union neighborhood immediately north of downtown Seattle. Vulcan has developed 6.3 million square feet (590,000 m2) of new residential, office, retail and biotechnology research space, and has a total development capacity of 10,000,000 sq ft (930,000 m2). Vulcan advocated for the Seattle Streetcar line known as South Lake Union Streetcar, which runs from Seattle's Westlake Center to the south end of Lake Union. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal called Allen's South Lake Union investment "unexpectedly lucrative" and one that led to his firm selling a 1,800,000-square-foot (170,000 m2) office complex to Amazon.com for US$1.16 billion, one of the most expensive office deals ever in Seattle. "It's exceeded my expectations", Allen said of the South Lake Union development. Allen purchased the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team in 1988 from California real estate developer Larry Weinberg for $70 million. He was instrumental in the development and funding of the Moda Center (previously known as the Rose Garden), the arena where the Blazers play. He purchased the arena on April 2, 2007, and stated that this was a major milestone and a positive step for the franchise. The Allen-owned Trail Blazers reached the playoffs 19 times including the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992. According to Forbes, the Blazers were valued at $2.09 billion in 2021 and ranked No. 13 out of 30 NBA teams. Allen purchased the National Football League's Seattle Seahawks in 1997 from owner Ken Behring, who had attempted to move the team to southern California the previous year. Herman Sarkowsky, a former Seahawks minority owner, told The Seattle Times about Allen's decision to buy the team, "I'm not sure anybody else in this community would have done what [Allen] did." In 2002, the team moved into Seahawks Stadium (now known as Lumen Field), after Allen invested into the upgrade of the stadium. Acquired for US$200 million in 1997, the Seahawks were valued at $1.33 billion in August 2014 by Forbes, which says the team has "one of the most rabid fan bases in the NFL". Under the helm of Allen, the Seahawks made the Super Bowl three times following NFC Championship victories (2005, 2013, 2014), and won Super Bowl XLVIII in February 2014 and Super Bowl LX in February 2026. Allen's Vulcan Sports & Entertainment is part of the ownership team of Seattle Sounders FC, a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise that began play in 2009 at CenturyLink Field, a stadium which was also controlled by Allen. The ownership team also includes film producer Joe Roth, businessman Adrian Hanauer, and comedian Drew Carey. The Sounders sold out every home game during its first season, setting a new MLS record for average match attendance. Allen and his sister, Jody Allen, together were the owners and executive producers of Vulcan Productions, a television and film production company headquartered in Seattle within the entertainment division of Vulcan Inc. Their films have received various recognition, ranging from a Peabody Award to Independent Spirit Awards, Grammys and Emmys. In 2014 alone, Allen's film, We The Economy, won 12 awards including a Webby award for best Online News & Politics Series. The films have also been nominated for Golden Globes and Academy Awards among many others. Vulcan Productions' films and documentary projects include Far from Heaven (2002), Hard Candy (2005), Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge (2005), Where God Left His Shoes (2006), Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (2007), This Emotional Life (2010), We The Economy (2014) Racing Extinction (2015) and Oscar-nominated Body Team 12 (2015). In 2013, Vulcan Productions co-produced the Richard E. Robbins-directed film Girl Rising which tells the stories of girls from different parts of the world who seek an education. Globally, over 205 million households watched Girl Rising during the CNN premier, and over 4 million people have engaged with Girl Rising through websites and social media. Through the associated 10×10 program, over $2.1 million has been donated to help girls receive an education worldwide. Also in 2013, Vulcan Productions signed on as a producing partner of Pandora's Promise, a documentary about nuclear power, directed by Oscar-nominated director Robert Stone. It was released on CNN in November 2013. A variety of college and private screenings as well as panel discussions have been hosted throughout the country. Philanthropy Allen gave more than $2 billion towards the advancement of science, technology, education, wildlife conservation, the arts, and community services in his lifetime. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which he founded with his sister Jody, was established to administer a portion of Allen's philanthropic contributions. As of 2015, the foundation had given more than $494 million to over 1,500 nonprofits. in 2010, Allen became a signatory of The Giving Pledge, promising to give at least half of his fortune to philanthropic causes. Allen received commendations for his philanthropy, including the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and Inside Philanthropy's "Philanthropist of the Year". In September 2003, Allen launched the Allen Institute for Brain Science with a $100 million contribution dedicated to understanding how the human brain works. Allen eventually donated $500 million to the institute, making it his single-largest philanthropic recipient. The institute for has taken a Big Science and open science approach; it makes research tools available to the scientific community. The institute's projects include the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, Allen Human Brain Atlas and the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas. It helped to advance and shape the White House's BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project. Founded in 2014, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)'s main focus is to research and engineer artificial intelligence. The institute is modeled after the Allen Institute for Brain Science and led by researcher and professor Oren Etzioni. As of 2015, AI2 had undertaken four main projects, Semantic Scholar, Euclid, Plato, and Aristo—the latter of which aims to build an AI system that can pass an 8th-grade science exam. In December 2014, Allen committed $100 million to create the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle. As of 2014, the institute was investigating and creating a virtual model of cells in the hope of finding treatments for diseases. Like Allen's other institutes, all data generated and tools developed will be made publicly available online. Launched in 2016 with a $100 million commitment, The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group aims to discover and support ideas at the frontier of bioscience in an effort to accelerate the pace of discovery. The group seeks to support scientists and research areas that "some might consider out-of-the-box at the very edges of knowledge". Allen launched the Allen Distinguished Investigators Awards (ADI) in 2010 to support early-stage research projects that often have difficulty securing funding from traditional sources. Allen donated the seed money to build SETI's Allen Telescope Array, eventually contributing $30 million to the project. The Paul Allen's flower fly was named in recognition of his contributions to dipterology. In 2022, the Paul Allen estate created the Fund for Science and Technology (FFST) and launched in August 2025 with an initial endowment of $3.1 billion and a plan to deploy at least $500 million across bioscience, the environment and AI. The foundation is led by Lynda Stuart and chaired by Jody Allen. Allen provided more than $7 million to fund a census of elephant populations in Africa, the largest such endeavor since the 1970s. The Great Elephant Census team flew over 20 countries to survey African savannah elephants. The survey results, published in 2015, showed rapid and accelerated decline. He began supporting the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us Project in 2014 to improve data on global fisheries as a way to fight illegal fishing. Part of his $2.6 million in funding went towards the creation of FishBase, an online database about adult finfish. Allen funded the Global FinPrint initiative, launched in July 2015, a three-year survey of sharks and rays in coral reef areas. The survey is the largest of its kind and designed to provide data to help conservation programs. Allen backed Washington state initiative 1401 to prohibit the purchase, sale and distribution of products made from 10 endangered species including elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, marine turtles, pangolins, sharks and rays. The initiative gained enough signatures to be on the state's ballot on November 3, 2015, and passed. Alongside the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), Allen and Vulcan Inc. launched the Smart City Challenge, a contest inviting American cities to transform their transportation systems. Created in 2015 with the USDOT's $40 million commitment as well as $10 million from Allen's Vulcan Inc., the challenge aims to create a first-of-its-kind modern city that will demonstrate how cities can improve quality of life while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The winning city was Columbus, Ohio. As a member of the International SeaKeepers Society, Allen hosted its proprietary SeaKeeper 1000TM oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring system on all three of his megayachts. Allen funded the building of microgrids, which are small-scale power grids that can operate independently, in Kenya, to help promote reusable energy and empower its businesses and residents. He was an early investor in the Mawingu Networks, a wireless and solar-powered Internet provider which aims to connect rural Africa with the world, and Off Grid Electric, a company focused on providing solar energy to people in emerging nations. In 2014, Allen pledged at least $100 million toward the fight to end the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, making him the largest private donor in the Ebola crisis. He also created a website called TackleEbola.org as a way to spread awareness and serve as a vehicle for donors to fund projects in need. The site highlighted organizations working to stop Ebola that Allen supported, such as International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Médecins Sans Frontières, Partners in Health, UNICEF and World Food Program USA. On April 21, 2015, Allen brought together key leaders in the Ebola fight at the Ebola Innovation Summit in San Francisco. The summit aimed to share key learnings and reinforce the need for continued action and support to reduce the number of Ebola cases to zero, which was achieved in January 2016. In October 2015, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation announced it would award seven new grants totaling $11 million to prevent future widespread outbreaks of the virus. In 2012, along with his research team and the Royal Navy, Allen attempted to retrieve the ship's bell from HMS Hood, which sank in the Denmark Strait during World War II, but the attempt failed due to poor weather. On August 7, 2015, they tried again and recovered the bell in very good condition. It was restored and put on display in May 2016 in the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, in remembrance of the 1,415 crewmen lost. Allen funded the research ship RV Petrel in 2015 and bought it the following year. The project team aboard Petrel found the wreck of the Japanese battleship Musashi in 2015. In 2017, at Allen's direction, Petrel found the wrecks of USS Indianapolis and USS Ward and multiple wrecks from the Battle of Surigao Strait and the Battle of Ormoc Bay. In 2018, Petrel found a lost US Navy C-2A Greyhound aircraft in the Philippine Sea, USS Lexington in the Coral Sea, and the USS Juneau off the coast of the Solomon Islands. Allen established non-profit community institutions to display his collections of historic artifacts. These include: An active art collector, Allen gave more than $100 million to support the arts. On October 15, 2012, the Americans for the Arts gave him the Eli and Edythe Broad Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. Allen loaned out more than 300 pieces from his private art collection to 47 venues. The original 541-page typescript of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula was in his collection at one point. In 2013, Allen sold Barnett Newman's Onement VI (1953) at Sotheby's in New York for $43.8 million, then the record for a work by the abstract artist. In 2015, Allen founded the Seattle Art Fair, a four-day event with 60-plus galleries from around the world including the participation of the Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner. The event drew thousands and inspired other satellite fairs throughout the city. In August 2016, Allen announced the launch of Upstream Music Fest + Summit, an annual festival fashioned after South by Southwest. Held in Pioneer Square, the first festival took place in May 2017. It was cancelled in 2019 following Allen's death in 2018. In November 2022, Allen's art collection was auctioned at Christie's New York. It was the biggest sale in art auction history, surpassing $1.5 billion in sales. Six works sold for more than $100 million: Seurat's Les Poseuses Ensemble (Petite version), ($149 million, with fees); Paul Cézanne's 1888-90 La Montagne Sainte-Victoire ($138 million); van Gogh's Verger avec cyprès ($117 million); and Gustav Klimt's 1903 Birch Forest ($105 million). The auction also included paintings by Botticelli, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Jan Brueghel the Younger. Proceeds from the auction benefitted undisclosed philanthropies. In 1989, Allen donated $2 million to the University of Washington to construct the Allen Library, which was named after his father Kenneth S. Allen, a former associate director of the University of Washington library system. In the same year, Allen donated an additional $8 million to establish the Kenneth S. Allen Library Endowment. In 2012, the endowment was renamed the Kenneth S. and Faye G. Allen Library Endowment after Allen's mother (a noted bibliophile) died. In 2002, Allen donated $14 million to the University of Washington to construct the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. The building was dedicated in October 2003. In 2010, Allen announced a gift of $26 million to build the Paul G. Allen School of Global Animal Health at Washington State University, his alma mater. The gift was the largest private donation in the university's history. In 2016, Allen pledged a $10 million donation over four years for the creation of the Allen Discovery Centers at Tufts University and Stanford University. The centers would fund research that would read and write the morphogenetic code. Over eight years the donation could be as much as $20 million. In 2017, Allen donated $40 million (with an additional $10 million from Microsoft) to reorganize the University of Washington's Computer Science and Engineering department into the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Personal life While Allen expressed interest in romantic love and one day having a family, he never married and had no children. His marriage plans with his first girlfriend were cancelled as he felt he "was not ready to marry at 23". He was sometimes considered reclusive. In the 1990s, he purchased Rock Hudson's Los Angeles estate from film director John Landis and added the Neptune Valley recording studio to the property. Allen's family put the home on the market for $56 million after his death. Allen received his first electric guitar at the age of sixteen, and was inspired to play it by listening to Jimi Hendrix. In 2000, Allen played rhythm guitar on the independently produced album Grown Men. In 2013, he had a major label release on Sony's Legacy Recordings: Everywhere at Once by Paul Allen and the Underthinkers. PopMatters.com described Everywhere at Once as "a quality release of blues-rock that's enjoyable from start to finish". On February 7, 2018, an interview by the magazine New York on their Vulture website, Quincy Jones expressed respect for Allen's talent, saying he "sings and plays just like Hendrix". Allen's 414-foot (126 m) yacht, Octopus, was launched in 2003. As of 2025, it was 26th on the list of motor yachts by length. The yacht is equipped with two helicopters, a submarine, an ROV, a swimming pool, a music studio and a basketball court. Octopus is a member of AMVER, a voluntary group ship reporting system used worldwide by authorities to arrange assistance for those in distress at sea. The ship is also known for its annual celebrity-studded parties which Allen hosted at the Cannes film festival, where Allen and his band played for guests. These performances included musicians such as Usher and Dave Stewart. Octopus was also used in the search for a missing American pilot and two officers whose plane disappeared off Palau, and the study of a rare fish called a coelacanth, among many others. Following Allen's death in 2018, Octopus was refitted and put on the market for $325 million. Allen also owned Tatoosh, one of the world's 100 largest yachts. In January 2016, Tatoosh severely damaged about 1,300 square meters of coral reef in the West Bay replenishment zone of the Cayman Islands. In April 2016, the Department of Environment and Allen's Vulcan Inc. completed a restoration plan to help speed recovery and protect the future of coral in the area. Idea Man In 2011, Allen's memoir, Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft, was published by Portfolio, a Penguin Group imprint. The book recounts how Allen became enamored with computers and, at an early age, conceived the idea for Microsoft, recruited his friend Bill Gates to join him, and launched what would become the world's most successful software company. It also explores Allen's business and creative ventures following his 1983 departure from Microsoft, including his involvement in SpaceShipOne, his purchase of the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Seahawks, his passion for music, and his ongoing support for scientific research. The book made the New York Times Best Seller list. A paperback version, which included a new epilogue, was published on October 30, 2012. Death Allen was diagnosed with Stage 1-A Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1982. His cancer was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy. Allen was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2009. Likewise, the cancer was successfully treated until it returned in 2018. It ultimately caused his death by septic shock on October 15, 2018. He was 65 years old. Allen's sister, Jody Allen, was named executor and trustee of his estate. Several Seattle-area landmarks, including the Space Needle, Columbia Center and Lumen Field, as well as various Microsoft offices throughout the United States, were illuminated in blue on November 3, 2018, as a tribute to Allen. He was also honored by his early business partner and lifelong friend Bill Gates, who said in a statement: Paul loved life and those around him, and we all cherished him in return. He deserved much more time, but his contributions to the world of technology and philanthropy will live on for generations to come. We will miss him tremendously. Awards and recognition Allen received numerous awards in many different areas, including sports, technology, philanthropy, and the arts: See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandi_Peterson] | [TOKENS: 614] |
Contents Sandi Peterson Sandi Peterson (born 1959) is an American businesswoman. She is currently an Operating Partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and serves on the Microsoft Board of Directors. She was group worldwide chairman at Johnson & Johnson from 2012-2018 and previously held leadership positions at Bayer Medical Care, Medco Health Solutions, Nabisco and Whirlpool Corporation. Early life and education The youngest of six children, Peterson received her bachelor's degree in government studies from Cornell University, and her MPA in applied economics from Princeton University. She began her career working in consulting at McKinsey & Company. Business career From 1987 to 1993, Peterson worked in strategy, finance, sustainability, and product development at Whirlpool Corporation, and later at Nabisco. In 2000, Peterson accepted a leadership position at Medco Health Solutions. In 2005, she became president of Bayer Medical Care. She also received a fellowship from the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany, and spent a year serving with the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federation of German Industries. In 2010, she was promoted to chairman and chief executive officer of Bayer CropScience AG. Peterson was formerly the chair of the conservation research charity EcoHealth Alliance (previously called Wildlife Trust). and served on the board of directors at Dun & Bradstreet. In 2015 she joined the board of directors of Microsoft and is the lead independent director. Peterson often advocates for women in business, and was featured in a multi-part series of interviews on the subject by Forbes in 2011. She is a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In December 2012, Peterson accepted a position at Johnson & Johnson as group worldwide chairman, which made her the highest-ranking woman at the company. The Wall Street Journal reported that Johnson & Johnson had "wooed" Peterson during the hiring process for several months. Before Peterson was hired, the company had been reported as having difficulties with product recalls and declining sales. Peterson's hiring was part of a company-wide overhaul meant to address these issues. Peterson also joined the company's executive committee and relocated from Germany, where she had worked for Bayer, to New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Johnson & Johnson is headquartered. On October 1, 2018, Peterson retired from Johnson & Johnson Honors and awards In 2013, the National Association for Female Executives gave Peterson their "woman of achievement" award. In 2014, Peterson received the Corporate Vision Award from Gilda's Club, New York City, a charity foundation supporting cancer victims and their families. That same year, Forbes ranked Peterson at number 20 on its list of the "most powerful women in business". In 2015, The Committee of 200 named Peterson the recipient of its annual "corporate innovator" award. In June 2015, Peterson traveled to Berlin to give a presentation on healthcare policy to government leaders at the G7 summit. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Markus_Persson] | [TOKENS: 52] |
Template talk:Markus Persson Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve the "Template:Markus Persson" page. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Scharf] | [TOKENS: 1359] |
Contents Charles Scharf Charles W. Scharf (born April 24, 1965) is an American business executive who is the chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo. He has been CEO of Wells Fargo since October 2019, and its chairman since October 2025. He was previously CEO of Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), and, prior to that, CEO of Visa Inc. Early life and education Scharf was born in 1965 in New York City, and grew up in the New York suburb of Westfield, New Jersey. His father was a stockbroker, and as a teenager Charles worked in back-office jobs at Manhattan brokerage firms. Scharf received a BA from Johns Hopkins University in 1987. He earned an Executive MBA from New York University Stern School of Business in 1991. Career In 1987, a family connection assisted Scharf with an introduction to Jamie Dimon, who hired him for a back-office job at Commercial Credit, a growing consumer finance company where Dimon was CFO and Sandy Weill was CEO. After six months, Scharf was made Dimon's assistant. Scharf's career proceeded at Dimon's and Weill's subsequent acquisitions, mergers, and organizarions, including Primerica, Smith Barney, Salomon Brothers, and Travelers, and eventually Citigroup, Bank One, and JPMorgan Chase. From 1995 to 1999, Scharf was the CFO of Salomon Brothers and its successor company Salomon Smith Barney. From 1999 to 2000, he was the CFO of the global corporate and investment bank division at Citigroup, Inc. He was CFO of Bank One from 2000 to 2002, and chief executive of Bank One's retail division from 2002 to 2004. After Bank One merged with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2004, he was chief executive of JPMorgan Chase's retail financial services business from 2004 to 2011. Scharf orchestrated the bank's acquisition and integration of the bankrupt and heavily indebted Washington Mutual in 2008; the deal gave JPMorgan Chase a coast-to-coast retail presence for the first time. He was a managing director of One Equity Partners, JPMorgan's private-equity investment division, from 2011 to November 2012. Scharf took over as Visa Inc.'s CEO in November 2012, succeeding Joseph Saunders. He was also appointed as a board member after increasing the size of the board from 10 to 11 members. Scharf received a total compensation of $24.20 million, including base salary, stock grants and incentives in 2013. Under Scharf's tenure, Visa placed at number 238 on the Fortune 500, with $11.7 billion in revenue. On October 17, 2016, Scharf advised Visa's board of directors that he could no longer spend enough time in San Francisco "to do the job effectively". and that he would step down on December 1 of that year. Scharf was CEO of Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) from July 2017 to September 2019, and the chairman of its board from January 2018 to September 2019. Scharf became president and CEO of Wells Fargo on October 21, 2019. The Washington Post said his "broad experience makes Scharf a safe political choice, who is already well known by both regulators and lawmakers." He leads the bank from his New York office, and travels frequently to other Wells Fargo hubs. In November 2019, Scharf appointed BNY Mellon vice chairman and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley to be head of public affairs for Wells Fargo. By September 2020, Scharf had committed to major cost cuts, and had appointed additional new executives including a new chief financial officer, chief operating officer, leader of the credit cards division, and chief compliance officer; many of the new appointees had worked with him at JPMorgan Chase. In 2023, Scharf's total compensation from Wells Fargo was $26 million. It rose to $31.2 million in 2024, a 7.6 percent increase from the year before. In June 2025, the Federal Reserve lifted the punitive asset cap that had been imposed on Wells Fargo in February 2018. The asset-cap lift was largely credited by analysts to Scharf's clean-up and turnaround efforts as CEO. Reuters noted that this clean-up included installing new leadership, cutting more than 55,000 jobs, exiting unprofitable businesses, reworking the bank's risk management and controls, and reworking the company's performance-review process. In October 2025, Scharf was appointed chairman of Wells Fargo's board of directors. Additional posts In February 2014, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate individuals to key administration posts, including Scharf, who was appointed as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans. Scharf is on the board of directors of Microsoft. He is a member of The Business Council, and vice chair of the Bank Policy Institute. He is an emeritus trustee of Johns Hopkins University. Personal life Scharf and his wife Amy have two daughters. They live in New York. Comments about diversity Reuters reported that during a covid-lockdown Zoom meeting in the summer of 2020, Scharf drew both criticism and praise for comments about black people in the workforce when he said that Wells Fargo faced issues reaching diversity goals because there was not enough qualified minority talent to draw from. On June 18, 2020, he had sent out a company-wide memo saying: “While it might sound like an excuse, the unfortunate reality is that there is a very limited pool of black talent to recruit from.” His Zoom-meeting comment reportedly angered some unidentified black employees of the company. The Reuters report also stated "Not all attendees recalled being offended. 'The meeting was incredibly constructive... I walked away being incredibly surprised at how genuine and sincere he is,' said Alex David, president of the Black/African American Connection Team Member Network." Ken Bacon, a black former mortgage industry executive, was quoted as being "shocked and puzzled" by Scharf's comments. The Reuters report noted that within his first year as CEO Scharf had already added two black executives to Wells Fargo's operating committee and had pledged to double the number of black leaders at the bank over five years. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Guthrie] | [TOKENS: 377] |
Contents Scott Guthrie Scott Guthrie (born February 6, 1975) is Executive Vice President of the Cloud and AI group in Microsoft. He leads the teams that deliver Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, GitHub, .NET, HoloLens, Microsoft SQL Server, Power BI and Power Apps. Guthrie graduated with a degree in computer science from Duke University. Following this, he joined Microsoft in 1997. He frequently presents wearing a signature red shirt and speaks at many of the major Microsoft conferences. He is also known for his work on ASP.NET, which he and colleague Mark Anders developed while at Microsoft. Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI Group Under his leadership as the Executive Vice President of the Cloud + AI Group (formerly Cloud and Enterprise Group) since February 2014, Scott Guthrie is responsible for the overall vision, engineering, and strategy of Microsoft's massive cloud computing business and its transition into the age of Artificial Intelligence. This comprehensive portfolio includes the entire Microsoft Azure platform, which now serves 95% of the Fortune 500 companies; all Developer Tools like Visual Studio, VS Code, and the .NET framework (which he helped co-found); the complete AI platform including generative AI solutions like the Azure OpenAI Service; and the Business Applications division, which features Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Reporting directly to the CEO, Guthrie's work has been instrumental in making Microsoft a global leader in cloud and enterprise technology, successfully competing in the hyperscale cloud market and driving the integration of AI across its product line up. He has been a key contributor to Microsoft's cloud evolution since joining the company in 1997. Personal life Guthrie lives in Seattle with his wife and two children. References External links This article related to Microsoft is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_LGBTQIA%2B_Employee_%26_Allies_at_Microsoft] | [TOKENS: 762] |
Contents Global LGBTQIA+ Employee & Allies at Microsoft Global LGBTQIA+ Employee & Allies at Microsoft (formerly Gay and Lesbian Employees At Microsoft) (GLEAM) refers to the Microsoft employee resource group comprising LGBTQIA+ employees along with straight allies. GLEAM originated as a private mailing list during the 1980s. Members of the list successfully campaigned for sexual orientation to be added to Microsoft's anti-discrimination policy in 1989. In 1997, group leaders pointed out that anti-gay actions had occurred, but "overt bias is extremely rare." GLEAM also lobbied for Microsoft to offer insurance and other benefits to same-sex domestic partners. Lobbying intensified after Lotus software offered these benefits to its workers. Microsoft added this benefit in 1993. GLEAM became more formally organized in 1993 under Microsoft's Diversity Advisory Council, along with Blacks at Microsoft (BAM), the women's group – known as Hoppers – and other similar groups. More recently, the group influenced Microsoft to add gender identity and expression to its anti-discrimination policies in April 2005 and, in 2006, to progressively extend health coverage benefits to cover transgender care. Since this time, the Human Rights Campaign has Microsoft's Corporate Equality Index rating – a set of metrics to measure a company's compliance with its goals of gender identity neutrality in the workplace – to 100%. Washington state gay rights legislation GLEAM also pushed to secure Microsoft's support of gay rights legislation in Washington state. During legislative hearings on Washington's H.B. 1515 bill, which would extend the state's current anti-discrimination laws to people with alternate sexual orientations, two Microsoft employees testified as private citizens on behalf of the legislation. A conservative religious group took this to mean Microsoft was actively supporting the legislation as an organization and demanded the company reverse its support. In an April 22, 2005 e-mail, company CEO Steve Ballmer explained to Microsoft employees that earlier in the year, the company had decided to focus its lobbying efforts on issues more directly related to its core business (e.g., computer privacy). In the same e-mail, he affirmed the company's commitment to diversity and encouraged individual shareholders to get involved in the issue, but said that no one on either side should represent themselves as speaking for the company. In response, seven days later, the GLEAM board of directors sent an e-mail that proposed, with specific timelines, various steps that Microsoft should take in order to repair its public image and the "lack of trust" created by the Ballmer e-mail on April 22. Among the proposals was that Microsoft should acknowledge its neutral position was a mistake (including a proposed press release and a seven-day suggested timeframe for the dissemination of the release) and partner with GLEAM as "subject matter experts" in reaching out to the LGBT community, beginning with a sixty-day "intense outreach" period. Meanwhile, a petition of employees asking Microsoft to support the bill topped 1700 signatures.[citation needed] The bill was passed in the subsequent legislative session (2006) under the leadership of gay legislator, Rep. Ed Murray (D) of the 43rd legislative district and after the defection of Republican State Senator, Bill Finkbeiner, who subsequently retired and whose seat was captured by Democrat and Microsoft alumnus, Eric Oemig. During the 2006 elections, voters of the 43rd legislative district also elevated Rep. Ed Murray to the Washington State Senate. On September 15, 2009, Microsoft publicly announced its support for Referendum 71 to protect Washington State Domestic Partnerships. See also References External links This article related to Microsoft is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rashid] | [TOKENS: 591] |
Contents Richard Rashid Richard Farris Rashid is an American computer scientist and the founder of Microsoft Research, which he created in 1991. Between 1991 and 2013, as its chief research officer and director, he oversaw the worldwide operations for Microsoft Research which grew to encompass more than 850 researchers and a dozen labs around the world. Biography Rashid was born in Fort Madison, Iowa, and is the son of Farris Rashid and Ramona Wright Rashid. Rashid graduated from Stanford University in 1974 with degrees in mathematics and comparative literature. He then received a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rochester, finishing in 1980. While at Rochester, he and Gene Ball wrote what is probably one of the earliest networked multiplayer computer games, Alto Trek, for Xerox Alto computers. Before joining Microsoft in 1991, Rashid had been the developer of the Mach kernel during his tenure as a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. The Mach multiprocessor operating system kernel developed by Rashid has had a lasting influence in the design of modern operating systems, including the design of Windows NT, and remains at the core of several operating systems such as NeXTSTEP, GNU Hurd, macOS, iOS, OSF/1, and Tru64 UNIX. Rashid's Mach kernel pioneered the concepts of microkernel architecture and its impact can be traced in today's computing landscape with hundreds of millions of people still using Mach based operating systems thirty years after its creation. The Mach project popularized and refined concepts in virtual memory management, hardware abstraction, binary-code compatibility, and process management. These concepts advanced the state of operating systems and led to their practical and widespread adoption. Under Rashid's leadership, Microsoft Research has conducted research across various disciplines that include machine learning; multimedia and graphics, security, search, gaming, networking, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. His team has collaborated with the world's most prominent researchers in academia, industry and government to advance the state of computing and to help secure the future of Microsoft's products. Rashid has authored a number of patents in areas such as data compression, networking, and operating systems, and was a major developer of Microsoft's interactive TV system. He was promoted to vice president in 1994. In 2000, he became senior vice president of Microsoft. Rashid was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2003 for advances in operating systems and leadership in industrial research. Rashid and his wife Terri Rashid have made several charitable donations, including the Rashid Auditorium at Carnegie Mellon University. He has 5 children.[citation needed] While a faculty member at CMU, he also performed research and published numerous papers and articles on topics such as networking, operating systems, artificial intelligence, and programming languages for distributed computing applications. Awards and honors References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_unions] | [TOKENS: 2756] |
Contents Microsoft and unions Microsoft recognizes 11 video game unions[α] in the United States, representing 3,000 video game workers. Microsoft like other tech companies, has historically resisted unions and relied on temporary workers with lower pay and job security than regular employees. This shift began in 2015 and accelerated in 2022 when Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard. To expedite the approval process, Microsoft signed a labor neutrality agreement with Communications Workers of America. This agreement guarantees that Microsoft will not interfere with or oppose union organizing efforts. It applies to both of its video game subsidiaries, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax Media. Other unionization efforts at TaxSaver Software and Lionbridge have been unsuccessful. Microsoft employees in the United States have been vocal in their opposition to military and ICE government contracts with Microsoft. Microsoft workers also showed transnational support for Chinese tech worker protesting the 996.icu overtime culture. Around the world, Microsoft and its subsidiaries have formed unions in Canada, Poland, Romania, South Korea and Sweden and formed works councils in Germany. Bethesda Game Studios employees unionized in Canada, and King video game developers in Sweden voted to form a "union club". Australia Microsoft and the Australian Council of Trade Unions signed a voluntary framework agreement, codifying worker participation regarding the design and usage of artificial intelligence in the workplace. This partnership builds on previous memorandum of understandings regarding workplace protections and right to unionize, signed between Microsoft and Australian Services Union, Professionals Australia and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association. Canada Montreal studio of Bethesda Game Studios was certified on August 13, 2024, with support of Communications Workers of America Canada. This follows the recent unionization of QA testers at ZeniMax, its parent company in the United States. Germany Microsoft Germany has 2,700 employees and 6 offices across Germany as of 2014. Employees are represented by local works councils and a central works council since 1998. Romania Microsoft Romania employees formed a union in early 2024. Almost a year later, in January 2025, Microsoft Romania signed a collective agreement with SLTC (Romanian: Sindicatul Liber din Telecomunicații), a trade union affiliate of ANTIC (Romanian: Alianta Sindicatelor din Tehnologia Informatiilor si Comunicatii). The collective agreement covers 1,500 workers. United States Microsoft recognizes 11 video game unions[α] representing 3,000 video game workers. Microsoft like other tech companies, has historically resisted unions and relied on temporary workers with lower pay and job security than regular employees. Microsoft changed course in 2014 with the appointment of Brad Smith, Microsoft's new general counsel. Smith, along with the new CEO Satya Nadella, took a more conciliatory approach to regulation, including labor rights. This took shape in 2015, when Microsoft instructed all large contractors to provide paid time off. When Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $70 billion deal in January 2022, there was a pragmatic risk that Communications Workers of America (CWA) would oppose the acquisition if Microsoft did not recognize ongoing unionization efforts at Activision. The FTC raised antitrust concerns about the deal, so Microsoft hoped a labor neutrality agreement with CWA would make the pro-labor Biden administration less likely to oppose the acquisition. The labor neutrality agreement guarantees that Microsoft will not interfere with or oppose union organizing efforts. The agreement originally intended to apply only to Activision Blizzard (pending its acquisition, which closed in October). After the acquisition was approved, the scope of the agreement was expanded to include ZeniMax Media, an existing Microsoft video game subsidiary. Following the acquisition, Microsoft inherited two smaller video game unions from Activision Blizzard subsidiaries Raven Software and Blizzard Albany, and has since voluntarily recognized 6 additional video game unions at both ZeniMax Studios and Activision Blizzard. Other unionization efforts at TaxSaver Software and Lionbridge were unsuccessful. A small group of 18 agency contractors at TaxSaver software declared itself the "negotiating unit" in April 1999 and became union-dues paying members of Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, affiliated to CWA.: 372–373 Under joint employment law, their bargaining unit would have to be recognized by both Microsoft and TaxSaver which neither did. Despite the formal lack of collective bargaining, the TaxSaver unit experienced wage increases. A year later, Microsoft switched to H&R Block, resulting in a loss of jobs for the TaxSaver unit.: 372–373 38 software testers who were contracted by Lionbridge formed the union "Temporary Workers Alliance" union in 2014. Microsoft explicitly did not bargain with them, but they instructed Lionbridge to provide at least 3 weeks of vacation for all contractors. In 2016, Lionbridge announced layoffs, two months after the union ratified its first collective agreement. As part of the negotiations, the union had agreed to drop a joint employer lawsuit between them, Lionbridge and Microsoft. In May 2022, Quality Assurance (QA) testers of Activision Blizzard subsidiary Raven Software went public as "Game Workers Alliance" (GWA) with the support of Campaign to Organize Digital Employees-CWA. GWA voted to unionize (19–2), which the National Labor Relations Board certified afterwards. Following the Raven QA team's successful unionization, the 20-member QA team of Blizzard Albany announced a unionization drive in July 2022 as GWA Albany. The vote passed (14–0), forming the second union at an Activision Blizzard subsidiary. On March 8, 2024, 600 QA testers at 3 Activision studios in Austin, Texas, Eden Prairie, Minnesota and El Segundo, California formed the union "Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA" and voted to unionize (390–8) in favor, making it the largest video game union in the United States. In June 2024, an unfair labor practice was filed against Lionbridge by CWA alleging that the company illegally terminated the employment of 160 Activision software testers in Boise, Idaho, in retaliation for exercising their right to participate in concerted union activities. As part of the layoff, CWA also alleges that workers were required to sign an overly broad confidentiality agreement and an illegal waiver of certain rights protected by the National Labor Relations Act. A month later, 500 artists, designers, engineers, producers, and quality assurance testers who work on World of Warcraft voted to unionize. This is the second "wall to wall" union (following Bethesda Game Studios) to represents all employees in a Microsoft bargaining unit, regardless of their job title. The same day, 60 QA testers at Blizzard's Austin office, who work on various games including Diablo 4 and Hearthstone, also voted to unionize and formed the union "Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA". On March 27, 2025, user-researchers launched "Activision User Research Union-CWA" the first union for UX workers. In May 2025, developers who work on the Overwatch franchise launched "Overwatch Gamemakers Guild-CWA" after a super-majority of developers signed union authorization cards. In August 2025, the team of developers working on the Diablo franchise also unionized with CWA. In October 2025, more than 100 developers who work on the games Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble unionized with CWA, approximately a week after 400 workers across Blizzard's platform and technology department also voted to unionize with CWA. 300 QA testers at ZeniMax Online Studios voted to unionize as "ZeniMax Workers United-CWA" in January 2023. The QA testers review video games like Elder Scrolls Online. Among the issues they wish to improve are equitable pay, workplace communication and ending crunch time. ZeniMax QA testers at the Texas and Maryland studios initiated a one-day strike on November 13, 2024, in response to the shift from remote-work to return-to-office policy and Microsoft's reliance on outsourcing. In May 2025, following two years of negotiations, the ZeniMax QA testers union reached a contract agreement with Microsoft, guaranteeing wage and salary minimums, protections against arbitrary dismissal, grievance procedures, and a crediting policy for QA workers. 461 other employees also involved with Elder Scrolls Online, including designers, engineers, graphics artists and developers also at ZeniMax Online Studios, unionized as "ZOS United-CWA" in December. 241 US employees at Bethesda Game Studios unionized as "OneBGS" on July 20, 2024. Its three studios are located in Austin/Dallas, Texas and Rockville, Maryland. The bargaining unit includes artists, developers, and engineers; unlike its parent company ZeniMax, which exclusively represented QA testers at the time. The fourth studio in Montreal, Canada was certified in August, with the support of Communications Workers of America Canada. This marks the first instance of "wall-to-wall" unions within Microsoft bargaining units. In December 2025, 165 workers at id Software formed a "wall-to-wall" union with the CWA, which was recognized by Microsoft in line with its 2022 labor neutrality agreement with the CWA. Employees criticized Microsoft's bid of the JEDI cloud computing contracts in 2018. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company's war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army. 100s of Microsoft employees protested their employers government contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in June 2018. GitHub (subsidiary of Microsoft) had a $200,000 contract with ICE for the use of their on-site product GitHub Enterprise Server. This contract was renewed in 2019, despite internal opposition from many GitHub employees. In an email sent to employees, later posted to the GitHub blog on October 9, 2019, CEO Nat Friedman stated "The revenue from the purchase is less than $200,000 and not financially material for our company." He announced that GitHub had pledged to donate $500,000 to "nonprofit groups supporting immigrant communities targeted by the current administration." In response, at least 150 GitHub employees signed an open letter re-stating their opposition to the contract, and denouncing alleged human rights abuses by ICE. As of November 13, 2019, five workers had resigned over the contract. The ICE contract dispute came into focus again in June 2020 due to the company's decision to abandon "master/slave" branch terminology, spurred by the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement. Detractors of GitHub describe the branch renaming to be a form of performative activism and have urged GitHub to cancel their ICE contract instead. An open letter from members of the open source community was shared on GitHub in December 2019, demanding that the company drop its contract with ICE and provide more transparency into how they conduct business and partnerships. The letter has been signed by more than 700 people. On March 26, 2019, Chinese tech workers launched a public GitHub (owned by Microsoft) repository "996.ICU" protesting Chinese companies that have 996 working hour culture. "996.ICU" references 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week, ending up in the intensive care unit. In less than a week, over 200,000 users "starred" or liked the repository. This repository has been described as the largest display of solidarity among tech workers. A month later, Microsoft employees launched another GitHub repository in support of 996.ICU, which they said was threatened by censorship in China and asked Microsoft not to censor the original repository. Poland Microsoft Workers Union (Polish: Związek Zawodowy Pracowników Microsoft) was registered on August 10, 2023, and is led by Tomasz Dydo. As of 2024[update], an estimated 130 members have joined, representing a Microsoft's Polish workforce. Some of the issues the union wants to address are crunch time, unused vacation days and better enforcement of local labor laws. South Korea In the Summer of 2017, 370 workers of Microsoft Korea (half of the total workforce) formed Microsoft Korea Labor Union (Korean: 한국마이크로소프트노동조합).[β] It is led by Lee Ok-Hyoung, and is affiliated to the Korea Confederation of Trade Union.[γ] The union signed its first collective agreement in 2018, negotiation wages annually since. On November 24, 2021, 90% of the union membership voted to go on strike over long working hours and a 3.5% pay-raise offer that was rejected by the union membership, instead demanding a 6.5% pay-raise. The strike authorization passed after 37 rounds of negotiations. Sweden King is a video-game subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, headquartered in Stockholm. King is best known for publishing Candy Crush. In October 2024, Stockholm employees voted to form a "union club" (Swedish: Fackklubb) with Unionen, a Swedish trade union. As of January 2025, they have 217 members and meet with management to negotiate for a collective agreement. The impetus for increased membership was due to the cancellation of a private company doctor. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Hogan] | [TOKENS: 865] |
Contents Kathleen Hogan Kathleen Hogan is executive vice president of strategy and transformation at Microsoft. Prior to this move, in March 2025, she had been chief people officer at Microsoft since 2015. Education and early career Hogan graduated Harvard University in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and economics. In 1994, she earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. In between her time at university, she worked for Oracle Corporation, until 1992, first as a software developer, then as a software development manager. After graduating from Stanford Graduate School of Business, she worked as a management consultant for consulting firm McKinsey & Company until 2003. Microsoft Microsoft was one of Hogan's clients at McKinsey, and she was hired by Kevin Johnson at Microsoft in 2003. In 2005, she became the Corporate Vice President of Customer Service and Support. In 2009, she was promoted to Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Worldwide Services, which includes customer service, enterprise support, and consulting with 20,000+ employees. That year the Profiles in Diversity Journal put her on its annual "Women Worth Watching" list. In November 2014, Hogan was appointed to executive vice president for Human Resources, replacing Lisa Brummel. Although Hogan had never worked in HR before, she says her experience in leading the Worldwide Services division focused on attracting and retaining the best talent. Her diverse combination of experience, in technical, sales, and service, gave her credibility within the company. As chief people officer, her primary goal was to support the change in the company culture, led by new CEO Satya Nadella, from a "fixed mindset" of competition and trying to be the smartest person, to a "growth mindset" of learning, cooperation, diversity, and inclusion. The "mindset" methodology comes from the work of Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck. Dweck visited Microsoft in May 2016, met with Hogan and others, and was favorably impressed: unlike some other Fortune 500 companies that "give lip service to growth mind-set", Dweck said, "I could see that they understood it deeply." In October 2016, Dweck and Hogan wrote an article together for Harvard Business Review about how Microsoft uses growth mindset. In 2014, as one of her first actions as chief people officer, Hogan met with human resource leads from rival companies, including Laszlo Bock from Google, and Denise Young Smith from Apple, Inc., to discuss the goal of increasing diversity in the technology industry. The collaborative meetings continued, including HR leads from Intel and Washington State companies outside the technology industry such as Starbucks and Costco. In further efforts to expand corporate diversity and inclusion, Hogan expanded parental leave benefit to all parents, including fathers, in 2015, and introduced a four-week paid family caregiver leave in 2017, making Microsoft one of the only companies to offer such a benefit worldwide. Hogan says these benefits are also personal for her, as she remembers the support she needed from her Services team when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. Boards and honors Hogan serves on the boards of directors of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, which works to increase women's participation in computing, and of the Puget Sound region Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization. Hogan also joined the Board of Alaska Airlines in August 2019. She is a former executive board member of the Technology Services Industry Association. In 2015, Hogan was recognized as a "Woman of Influence" by the Puget Sound Business Journal. In 2016, she was named to the "Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology" list by Yahoo! and the National Diversity Council. In 2021, Hogan was named "HR Executive of the Year" by Human Resource Executive magazine for her leadership and people strategy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, she was inducted as a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources. Personal life Hogan was born and raised in southeast Wisconsin: Wauwatosa, Brookfield, and Pewaukee. She graduated from Brookfield Central High School in 1984. She has one son, born in 2002. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipchamp] | [TOKENS: 1019] |
Contents Microsoft Clipchamp Microsoft Clipchamp is a freemium video editing tool developed by Australian company Clipchamp Pty Ltd., a subsidiary of Microsoft. It is a web-based, non-linear editing software that allows users to import, edit, and export audiovisual material in a web browser window. The application is designed to be easy to use for beginners. Clipchamp has offices in Australia, the Philippines, Germany, and the United States. According to figures published by the company, at the beginning of 2021, it had more than 14 million users worldwide. In September 2021, Clipchamp Pty Ltd. was acquired by Microsoft. It has since been offered in a personal version through a Microsoft account and in a business or education version through a work or school account that is built on OneDrive and SharePoint. Features Microsoft Clipchamp has multiple features that allow further creativity and accessibility. Since July 2023, users can drag and drop files from their computer, OneDrive, and SharePoint (images, sound & video files) into a list of all media uploaded or inserted. Users can insert media into the video timeline as many times as they want. Users can replace an image, sound, or video clip with another by dragging and dropping it over the target. There is also a Gap Remover tool that removes gaps in the video. Videos can be trimmed, along with timings that can be edited. The user can crop videos and images, too. Text can be added anywhere on the screen, and can be in many fonts, and the size can be changed, too. Specific text color can be selected using presets or an HSV picker, and specific Text Styles (bold, medium, italics, normal) can be selected. The aspect ratio can also be selected, including 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 2:3, and 21:9. Clipchamp also supports numerous effects and transitions for videos and images. The user can export videos in 480p, 720p, and 1080p for free. Exporting GIFs are possible, while the video has to be 15 seconds or less. Microsoft Clipchamp uses a hybrid model of desktop and online application. In the personal version of Clipchamp (on Windows and in a web browser), video processing is all done locally on the computer and mobile phones, but the app itself runs online as a browser-based web app. This is done by uploading and saving project data and information like file names online but not the associated media files themselves. In the work version of Clipchamp, which is a part of Microsoft 365, media files are still processed locally but are automatically backed up to the user's OneDrive or SharePoint work or school account so that it can be accessed anywhere. This version also has integration with other Microsoft productivity services like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Stream. History Clipchamp Pty Ltd. was founded as a startup company by Alexander Dreiling (current CEO), Dave Hewitt, Tobias Raub and Soeren Balko, in Brisbane, Australia, in 2013. In an interview given to SmartCompany, Dreiling commented that at first, the company was "trying to build an enormous, distributed supercomputer". Among the first software developed by the company's team was a tool for video compression and conversion. 2014 saw the official launch of the first version of the free, audiovisual browser-based software on the Clipchamp platform. When the supercomputer project ground to a halt, the team decided to keep going with the video programming technology, which was, in the words of Dreiling, "a tool that worked on Chromebooks".[citation needed] In June 2016, Clipchamp was valued at 1.1 million dollars, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the same month, the second version of Clipchamp was launched internationally. By 2018, the firm had amassed 6.5 million users, attracting investors such as Steve Baxter, who invested one million dollars. In 2020, Clipchamp set up a base in Seattle, USA, after achieving capital of 13.2 million dollars, from alliances made with investment funds such as Transition Level Investments, Tola Capital, and TEN13, among others. In February 2021, Clipchamp published on its website that it has 14 million users worldwide, registered in 250 countries and territories. At that time, the company announced that it had an audiovisual library of 800,000 files.[citation needed] On September 7, 2021, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Clipchamp. In a press release, they expressed their interest in learning more about the video content creation market. Johnson Winter Slattery advised Microsoft on its acquisition. Clipchamp was integrated as part of Windows 11 beginning on March 9, 2022, as part of Insider Preview Build 22572. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Hood] | [TOKENS: 601] |
Contents Amy Hood Amy Hood (born August 9, 1971) is an American business executive and has been the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft since 2013. Hood is the first female chief financial officer in Microsoft's history. Early life and education For the first 12 years of her life, Hood grew up in Morehead, Kentucky and then in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father was a medical doctor, and her mother taught nursing. She has a sister who is a paediatrician. Hood was raised in the community of the church, it was the center of the value system, and she adopted the value that one did things for a bigger purpose, not always for oneself. She was on the math team in school. Hood holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University in 1994 and an MBA from Harvard University. Career Hood joined Microsoft in 2002, holding positions in the investor relations group. She also served as chief of staff in the Server and Tools Business, as well as running the strategy and business development team in the Business division. Previously, she worked at Goldman Sachs in various roles, including investment banking and capital markets groups. On 8 May 2013, Microsoft announced Hood would be replacing Peter Klein as the company's chief financial officer, making her the first female to hold the role in the company's history. She was characterized as operationally-focused and capable of managing costs. In her role, she has overseen over 57 deals, including the $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub in 2018. She was credited for shifting funding away from the company's legacy divisions such as Windows to its cloud computing division. It was also reported that one of Hood's main responsibilities was to create positive organizational culture at Microsoft and is known for regularly speaking to new Microsoft employees. In 2019, Hood's compensation reached nearly $20.3 million, with $19.1 million as stock awards and incentives. She was the company's second-highest-paid executive for the year. By 2025, her annual compensation was reportedly $25.79 million. Honors and recognition In 2013, she was ranked 63 in the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women, and in 2021, she was ranked 28 on the list. In 2023, Amy ranked 23rd in Forbes list of "World's 100 most powerful women". She was ranked 17th on Fortune's list of most powerful women in 2023. In 2025, she was ranked 56th most powerful women by Fortune. In the same year, Hood was also cited as part of Barron's annual list of 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance. Personal life Hood is married to Max Kleinman, a former partner at Accenture. Hood and her husband are also minority owners of Major League Soccer's Seattle Sounders FC. She has two children. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Power_Platform] | [TOKENS: 571] |
Contents Microsoft Power Platform Microsoft Power Platform is a collection of low-code development tools that allows users to build custom business applications, automate workflows, and analyze data. It also offers integration with GitHub, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Teams, amongst other Microsoft and third-party applications. Microsoft Power Platform enables users to streamline processes, gain insights from their data, and build custom solutions to meet their business needs. It is designed to be accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise, making it easier for organizations to create custom applications and automate workflows. Microsoft developed the Power Fx low-code programming language for expressing logic across the Power Platform. Products The Power Platform family of products includes: Microsoft Dataverse, formerly known as Microsoft Common Data Service until November 2020, is a relational database engine offered by Microsoft as a cloud-based data management software as a service for storing business data. Dataverse is a data storage and management engine serving as a foundation for Microsoft’s Power Platform, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 apps. It decouples the data from the application, allowing an administrator to analyze and report on data in a centralized manner. It is based on Common Data Model principles and includes security features and productivity tools. Data could be imported, managed and exported out of Dataverse. Dataverse is built on Microsoft Azure. It is mainly a tool for managing and storing data, and allows for creation and management of datasets through a single user interface. Dataverse is marketed for use with other Microsoft products such as Power Apps and Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications, and has data connectors to other Microsoft products like Azure Event Hub, Azure Service Bus, Microsoft SQL and Azure Data Lake. One example of use could be to use Dataverse as a form of data lake together with Microsoft Power Apps. Microsoft Dataverse is also offered as a standalone service for businesses looking to build custom data solutions with integration to external systems via webhooks. Dataverse has APIs so that the data can be consumed by other services, like for example Power Platform services like Power BI or Power Apps, or by custom services designed in for example Visual Studio. In addition to relational data, Dataverse also has support for file and blob storage, data lakes and semi-structured data. Dataverse is based on Microsoft's Common Data Model as its common data model and is built on Microsoft Azure SQL, where its physical data also is stored.[citation needed] Dataverse has the possibility to apply business logic like duplicate detection, calculated fields, rollup fields and business rules. It can be used to discover, validate and report data, and has the possibility to use Microsoft's proprietary common data model. Access in MS Dataverse is handled with Microsoft Entra ID which has conditional access and multifactor authentication (MFA), and offers individual column and row-level security. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface] | [TOKENS: 4575] |
Contents Microsoft Surface Models Accessories Microsoft Surface is a family of touchscreen-based personal computer, tablet, and interactive whiteboard hardware products designed and developed by Microsoft. The majority of them run the Windows operating system and use Intel processors; the earliest models (Surface RT and Surface 2) ran on ARM32, and a select handful of models starting with the Surface Pro X in 2019 run on ARM64. The Surface line has served as Microsoft's umbrella brand for PCs since it was first introduced in 2012, marking the company's first entry in building its own branded computers. It has since expanded to comprise several generations of hybrid tablets, 2-in-1 detachable notebooks, a convertible desktop all-in-one, an interactive whiteboard, and various accessories, many with unique form factors. Microsoft is also consolidating all other Microsoft hardware products such as PC accessories under the Surface brand as of 2023. Devices The Surface family currently features seven main lines of devices: History Microsoft first announced Surface at an event on June 18, 2012, presented by former CEO Steve Ballmer in Milk Studios Los Angeles. Surface was the first major initiative by Microsoft to integrate its Windows operating system with its own hardware, and is the first PC designed and distributed solely by Microsoft. Panos Panay was the general manager of the team that developed the Surface. Sinofsky initially stated that pricing for the first Surface would be comparable to other ARM devices and pricing for Surface Pro would be comparable to current ultrabooks. Later, Ballmer noted the "sweet spot" for the bulk of the PC market was $300 to $800. Microsoft revealed the pricing and began accepting preorders for the 2012 Surface tablet, on October 16, 2012 "for delivery by 10/26". The device was launched alongside the general availability of Windows 8 on October 26, 2012. Surface Pro became available the following year on February 9, 2013. The devices were initially available only at Microsoft Stores retail and online, but availability was later expanded into other vendors. In November 2012, Ballmer described the distribution approach to Surface as "modest" and on November 29 of that year, Microsoft revealed the pricing for the 64 GB and 128 GB versions of Surface with Windows 8 Pro. The tablet would go on sale on February 9, 2013, in the United States and Canada. A launch event was set to be held on February 8, 2013, but was cancelled at the last minute due to the February 2013 nor'easter. The 128GB version of the tablet sold out on the same day as its release. Though there was less demand for the 64GB version because of the much smaller available storage capacity, supplies of the lower cost unit were almost as tight. The following year, on March 30, 2015, it announced the Surface 3, a more compact version of the Surface Pro 3. On September 8, 2015, Microsoft announced the "Surface Enterprise Initiative", a partnership between Accenture, Avanade, Dell Inc., and HP, to "enable more customers to enjoy the benefits of Windows 10." As part of the partnership, Dell will resell Surface Pro products through its business and enterprise channels, and offer its existing enterprise services (including Pro Support, warranty, and Configuration and Deployment) for Surface Pro devices it sells. Microsoft announced the next generation Surface Pro 4 and the all new Surface Book, a hybrid laptop, at Microsoft October 2015 Event in New York on October 10, 2015. Microsoft began shipping Surface Hub devices on March 25, 2016. In June 2016, Microsoft confirmed production of the Surface 3 would stop in December of that year. No replacement product has been announced. Reports suggest this may be a consequence of Intel discontinuing the Broxton iteration of the Atom processor. On October 26, 2016, at Microsoft's event, a Surface Studio and Surface Book with Performance Base was announced. A wheel accessory, the Surface Dial, was announced as well, and became available on November 10, 2016. Immediately following the announcement of the Surface Laptop at the #MicrosoftEDU event on May 2, 2017, and the Microsoft Build 2017 developer conference, Microsoft announced the fifth-generation Surface Pro at a special event in Shanghai on May 23, 2017. On May 15, 2018, Microsoft announced the Surface Hub 2, featuring a new rotating hinge and the ability to link multiple Hubs together. In June 2018, Microsoft announced the Surface Go, a $400 Surface tablet with a 10-inch screen and 64 or 128 GB of storage. On October 2, 2019, Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 7, the Surface Laptop 3, and the Surface Pro X. Both the Surface Pro 7 and the Surface Laptop 3 come with a USB-C port. The Surface Pro X comes with the Microsoft SQ1 ARM processor. Microsoft also teased upcoming products: the Surface Neo, a dual screen tablet originally planned to run Windows 10X; and the Surface Duo, a dual screen mobile phone that runs Android. Both products were initially announced to be released in 2020, though reports suggest the release of the Surface Neo will be delayed until 2021. The Surface Duo was released on September 10, 2020. On September 22, 2021, Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 8, the Surface Duo 2 and the Surface Laptop Studio. The first-generation Surface uses a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 of the ARM architecture, as opposed to the Intel x64 architecture and therefore shipped with Windows RT, which was written for the ARM architecture. The second-generation Surface 2 added an Nvidia Tegra 4. The architecture limited Surface and Surface 2 to only apps from the Windows Store recompiled for ARM. With the release of the Surface 3, Microsoft switched the Surface line to the Intel x64 architecture, the same architecture found in the Surface Pro line. Surface 3 uses the Braswell Atom X7 processor. The 2019 Surface Pro X uses a custom ARM64 SOC, the Microsoft SQ1. The latest model uses an updated version of the SOC, known as Microsoft SQ2. The Surface devices are released in six internal storage capacities: 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 GB and 1 TB. With the release of the third generation, the 32 GB model was discontinued. All models except the Surface Pro X also feature a microSDXC card slot, located behind the kickstand, which allow for the use of memory cards up to 200 GB. Microsoft's Surface/Storage site revealed that the 32 GB Surface RT has approximately 16 GB of user-available storage and the 64 GB Surface RT has roughly 45 GB. The exterior of the earlier generations of Surface (2012 tablet, Pro, and Pro 2) is made of VaporMg magnesium alloy giving a semi-glossy black durable finish that Microsoft calls "dark titanium". Originally, the design of Surface was to feature a full "VaporMg" design, but the production models ditched this and went with a "VaporMg" coating. Later devices moved towards a matte gray finish showing the actual magnesium color through the semi-transparent top coating. The Surface Laptop is available in four colors: platinum, graphite gold, burgundy, and cobalt blue. The Surface and Surface Pro lines feature a kickstand which flips out from the back of the device to prop it up, allowing the device to be stood up at an angle hands-free. According to Microsoft, this is great for watching movies, video chatting, and typing documents. According to some reviewers, this kickstand is uncomfortable to use in one's lap and means the device won't fit on shallow desks. The first generation has a kickstand that can be set to a 22 degrees angle position. The second generation added a 55 degrees angle position which according to Microsoft makes the device more comfortable to type on the lap. The Surface 3 features three angle positions: 22, 44, and 60 degrees. The Surface Pro 3 is the first device to have a continuous kickstand that can be set at any angles between 22 and 150 degrees. With the fifth-generation Surface Pro, Microsoft added an additional 15 degrees of rotation to the hinge bringing the widest possible angle to 165 degrees, or what Microsoft calls "Studio Mode". On October 6, 2015, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Book, a 2-in-1 detachable with a mechanically attached, durable hardware keyboard. It became the first Surface device to be marketed as a laptop instead of a tablet. The device has a teardrop design. The Surface Book has what Microsoft calls a "dynamic fulcrum hinge" which allows the device to support the heavier notebook/screen portion. On October 26, 2016, Microsoft unveiled an additional configuration, called the Surface Book with Performance Base, which has an upgraded processor and a longer battery life. The second generation Surface Book 2 was announced on October 17, 2017, introducing an upgraded ceramic hinge for stability, and lighter overall weight distribution. A 15-inch model was added to the line. On May 6, 2020, the third generation Surface Book 3 was announced, featuring 10th-generation Intel processors, improved battery life, and faster SSD storage. On May 3, 2017, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Laptop, a non-detachable version of the Surface Book claiming to have the thinnest touch-enabled LCD panel of its kind. Its permanently attached hardware keyboard comes in four colors and uses the same kind of fabric as the Type Cover accessories for the tablets. The device comes with the newly announced Windows 10 S operating system, which enables faster boot times at the expense of the ability to download and install programs from the web instead of the Microsoft Store. Users can switch to a fully enabled version of Windows 10 for free. On October 26, 2016, Microsoft announced a 28-inch all-in-one desktop PC, the Surface Studio. The device claims to have the thinnest LCD ever made in an all-in-one PC. All its components, including the processor and a surround-sound system, are located in a compact base on which the screen is mounted upon via a flexible, four-point hinge. The design allows the screen to fold down to a 20-degree angle for physical interaction with the user. It comes with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update preinstalled, but is optimized for the Windows 10 Creators Update released in April 2017. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft introduced a new device category under the Surface family: the Surface Hub. It is an 84-inch 120 Hz 4K or 55-inch 1080p multi-touch, multi-pen, wall-mounted all-in-one device, aimed for collaboration and videoconferencing use of businesses. The device runs a variant of the Windows 10 operating system. On October 2, 2019, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Neo, an upcoming dual-screen tablet. The device is a folio with two 9-inch displays that can be used in various configurations ("postures"), including a laptop-like form where a Bluetooth keyboard is attached to the bottom screen. Depending on its position, the remainder of the touchscreen can be used for different features; the keyboard can be attached at the top to use the bottom as a touchpad, or at the bottom to display a special area above the keyboard (the "wonderbar"), which can house tools such as emojis. The device was originally planned to run a new Windows 10 edition known as Windows 10X, which was designed specifically for this class of devices. However, Microsoft eventually discontinued Windows 10X. At this time, it is unknown which version of Windows it will run. Alongside the Surface Neo, Microsoft also unveiled the Surface Duo, a dual-screen Android mobile device with a similar design. Unlike the Surface Neo, the Surface Duo did release in September 2020 with 6GB of RAM and 128/256GB of storage. It initially shipped with Android 10 and uses Microsoft Launcher as the default launcher. Both Surface Duo models hold two screens, one screen per side. The Surface Duo can be folded in many ways, such as tabletop, tent, or single-screen. The first Duo has a selfie camera on the right side with a flashlight. A second model, the Surface Duo 2, got released in 2021 with 8GB of RAM and a back camera on one side. Software The original Surface and Surface 2 models use Windows RT, a special version of Windows 8 designed for devices with ARM processors and cannot be upgraded to Windows 10. However, there were several major updates made available after its initial release that include Windows RT 8.1, RT 8.1 Update 1, RT 8.1 August update, and RT 8.1 Update 3. These older, ARM-based models of Surface are not compatible with Windows 10, but received several new features including a new Start menu similar to that found in early preview builds of Windows 10. From Surface Pro 4 and onward, all Surface devices support Windows Hello facial biometric authentication out of the box through its cameras and IR-sensors. The Surface Pro 3 can utilize the Surface Pro 4 Type Cover with Fingerprint ID to gain Windows Hello support. Prior to the release of Windows 10, on Surface Pro 3 Microsoft made the Surface Hub app available, which allowed the adjustment of Pen pressure sensitivity and button functions. The Surface Hub app was renamed "Surface" following the launch of the Surface Hub device. Additionally, toggles to control sound quality and to disable the capacitive Windows button on the Surface 3 and Pro 3 devices were included. With Surface Pro 3 and the Surface Pen based on N-Trig technology, Microsoft added the capability to launch OneNote from the lock screen without logging in by pressing the purple button at the top of the pen. Microsoft added sections to Windows 10 settings that have the ability to control the functions of the buttons on the Surface Pen. One such function is to launch OneNote with the press of the top button of the Surface Pro 4 pen. With the introduction of the Surface Dial, Microsoft added a Wheel settings section to the Settings app in Windows 10 under Devices. The Windows 10 Anniversary Update added the ability to adjust the shortcuts of each of the Pen's buttons performed. Accessories There are two main versions of the keyboard covers that connect via the Accessory Spine on the Surface tablets. The now discontinued Touch Cover, and the ever-evolving Type Cover. They feature a multi-touch touchpad, and a full QWERTY keyboard (with pre-defined action keys in place of the function row, though the function row is still accessible via the function button). The covers are made of various soft-touch materials and connect to the Surface with a polycarbonate spine with pogo pins. Microsoft sells the Surface Pen, an active-digitizer pen, separate of Surface, but included it in all Surface tablets until the fifth-generation Surface Pro where it was removed. The Surface Pen is designed to integrate with inking capabilities on Windows including OneNote. In 2013, Microsoft announced that they were going to design other covers for the Surface accessory spine (code named "blades") based on the Touch Cover 2's sensors. The only product that was shipped was the Surface Music Cover and the Surface Music Kit app. Model comparison Promotion In October 2012, Microsoft aired its first commercial, directed by Jon Chu, for the Surface product line. The first 30-second commercial is the Surface Movement which focus on Windows RT version of the first generation of Surface with detachable keyboard and kickstand. It first aired during Dancing with the Stars commercial break. In 2014, Microsoft announced a five-year, $400 million deal with the National Football League, in which Surface became the official tablet computer brand of the NFL. As part of the partnership, special, ruggedized Surface Pro 2 devices were issued to teams for use on the sidelines, allowing coaches and players view and annotate footage of previous plays. The partnership was initially hampered by television commentators, who erroneously referred to the devices as being an "iPad" on several occasions. Microsoft has since stated that it "coached" commentators on properly referring to the devices on-air. On January 11, 2016, Microsoft announced a collaboration with POW! WOW!. It includes a group of artists from around the world that utilizes various Surface devices, such as the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book, to create a total of 17 murals. The artists are filmed using their Surface devices and explain how they integrate Surface into their workflow. The final products are then posted to YouTube that accompanies a post on the Microsoft Devices blog. On February 17, 2016, Microsoft announced that alongside the US Department of Defense's plans to upgrade to Windows 10, it has approved Surface devices and certified them for use through the Defense Information Systems Agency Unified Capabilities Approved Products List. Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 3, and Surface 3 have all been approved as Multifunction Mobile Devices, thus meeting the necessary requirements for security and compatibility with other systems. Reception When Surface was first announced, critics noted that the device represented a significant departure for Microsoft, as the company had previously relied exclusively on third-party OEMs to produce devices running Windows, and began shifting towards a first-party hardware model with similarities to that of Apple. Steve Ballmer said that like Xbox, Surface was an example of the sort of hardware products Microsoft will release in the future. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), whose products have traditionally run Microsoft operating systems, have had positive responses to the release of Surface. HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Dell applauded Microsoft's decision to create its own Tablet PC and said that relationships with Microsoft have not changed. John Solomon, senior vice president of HP, said that "Microsoft was basically making a leadership statement and showing what's possible in the tablet space". Acer founder Stan Shih said that he believed Microsoft only introduced its own hardware in order to establish the market and would then withdraw in favor of its OEMs. However, others believe that OEMs were left sidelined by the perception that Microsoft's new tablet would replace their products. Acer chairman JT Wang advised Microsoft to "please think twice". Microsoft has acknowledged that Surface may "affect their commitment" of partners to the Windows platform. The need for the Surface to market an ARM-compatible version of Windows was questioned by analysts because of recent developments in the PC industry; both Intel and AMD introduced x86-based system-on-chip designs for Windows 8, Atom "Clover Trail" and "Temash" respectively, in response to the growing competition from ARM licensees. In particular, Intel claimed that Clover Trail-based tablets could provide battery life rivaling that of ARM devices; in a test by PC World, Samsung's Clover Trail-based Ativ Smart PC was shown to have battery life exceeding that of the first gen ARM-based Surface. Peter Bright of Ars Technica argued that Windows RT had no clear purpose, since the power advantage of ARM-based devices was "nowhere near as clear-cut as it was two years ago", and that users would be better off purchasing Office 2013 themselves because of the removed features and licensing restrictions of Office RT. Sales of the first generation Surface did not meet Microsoft's expectations, which led to price reductions and other sales incentives. In July 2013, Steve Ballmer revealed that the Surface hasn't sold as well as he hoped. He reported that Microsoft had made a loss of US$900,000,000 due to the lackluster Surface sales. Concurrently, Microsoft cut the price of first-gen Surface RT worldwide by 30%, with its U.S. price falling to US$350. This was followed by a further price cut in August after it was revealed that even the marketing costs had exceed the sales. On August 4, 2013, the cost of Surface Pro was cut by $100 giving it an entry price of $799. Several law firms sued Microsoft, accusing the company of misleading shareholders about sales of the first-gen ARM based Surface tablet, calling it an "unmitigated disaster". In the first two years of sales, Microsoft lost almost two billion dollars. The poor sales of the ARM-based Surface tablet had been credited to the continuing market dominance of Microsoft's competitors in the tablet market. Particularly, Apple's iPad retained its dominance due its App store offering the most tablet-optimized applications. Most OEMs opted to produce tablets running Google Android, which came in a wide variety of sizes and prices (albeit with mixed success among most OEMs), and Google Play had the second-largest selection of tablet applications. By contrast there was a limited amount of software designed specifically for Surface's operating system, Windows RT, the selection which was even weaker than Windows Phone. Indeed, OEMs reported that most customers felt Intel-based tablets were more appropriate for use in business environments, as they were compatible with the much more widely available x86 programs while Windows RT was not. Microsoft's subsequent efforts have been focused upon refining the Surface Pro and making it a viable competitor in the premium ultra-mobile PC category, against other Ultrabooks and the MacBook Air, while discontinuing development of ARM-powered Surface devices as the Surface 3 (non-Pro) had an Intel x86 CPU (albeit with lower performance than the Surface Pro 3). The resultant Surface Pro 3 succeeded in garnering a great interest in the Surface line, making Surface business profitable for the first time in fiscal year Q1 2015. Later in Q2, the Surface division's sales topped $1 billion. Surface division scored $888 million for Q4 2015 despite an overall loss of $2.1 billion for Microsoft, a 117% year-over-year growth thanks to the steady commercial performance of Surface Pro 3 and the launch of mainstream model Surface 3. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2018 the Surface division posted its best earnings performance to date. Timeline See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code] | [TOKENS: 1640] |
Contents Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code (commonly referred to as VS Code) is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, code refactoring, and embedded version control with Git. Users can change the theme, keyboard shortcuts and preferences, as well as install extensions that add functionality, including to extend its capabilities to function as an IDE for other languages. Visual Studio Code is proprietary software released under the "Microsoft Software License", but based on the MIT licensed program named "Visual Studio Code – Open Source" (also known as "Code – OSS"), also created by Microsoft and available through GitHub. In the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, out of over 49,000 responses, 75.9% of respondents reported using Visual Studio Code, more than twice the percentage of respondents who reported using its nearest alternative, Visual Studio. History Visual Studio Code was first announced on April 29, 2015, by Microsoft at the 2015 Build conference. A preview build was released shortly thereafter. On November 18, 2015, the project "Visual Studio Code – Open Source" (also known as "Code – OSS"), on which Visual Studio Code is based, was released under the open-source MIT License and made available on GitHub. Extension support was also announced. On April 14, 2016, Visual Studio Code graduated from the public preview stage and was released to the web. Features Visual Studio Code includes a source-code editor that can be used with a variety of programming languages, including C, C#, C++, Fortran, Go, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, Rust, and Julia. Visual Studio Code employs the same editor component (codenamed "Monaco") used in Azure DevOps (formerly called "Visual Studio Online" and "Visual Studio Team Services"). The downloadable version of Visual Studio Code is built on the Electron framework, which is used to develop Node.js web applications that run on the Blink layout engine. Visual Studio Code for the Web is a browser-based version of the editor that can be used to edit both local files and remote repositories (on GitHub and Microsoft Azure) without installing the full program. It is officially supported and hosted by Microsoft and can be accessed at vscode.dev. Out of the box, Visual Studio Code includes basic support for most common programming languages. This basic support includes syntax highlighting, bracket matching, code folding, and configurable snippets. Visual Studio Code also ships with IntelliSense for JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, CSS, and HTML, as well as debugging support for Node.js. Support for additional languages can be provided by freely available extensions on the VS Code Marketplace. VS Code features a built-in debugger designed to enhance the development process. It provides native support for debugging Node.js applications, while additional debuggers for other programming languages can be installed via extensions. The debugger allows developers to attach to running processes and step through source code line-by-line during execution, offering a detailed view of program flow. It can also display disassembly for low-level analysis in C++. Furthermore, users can set breakpoints – either standard or conditional – to pause execution at specific points and examine the program's state, while also monitoring variable values in real-time as the code runs. An interactive feature of VS Code's debugging toolkit is the Debug Console. This panel is integrated directly into the debugging session, enabling users to evaluate expressions, such as checking variable values or testing functions, and execute commands on the fly. This functionality provides developers with greater control and deeper insight into the program's behavior. Instead of a project system, VS Code allows users to open one or more directories, which can then be saved in workspaces for future reuse. This allows it to operate as a language-agnostic code editor for any language. It supports many programming languages and a set of features that differ per language. Unwanted files and folders can be excluded from the project tree via settings. Many Visual Studio Code features are not exposed through menus or the user interface but can be accessed via the Command Palette. The Command Palette is able to execute virtually every feature the graphical interface supports, making it very keyboard-accessible. Visual Studio Code provides a fully featured integrated terminal that opens at the root of the current workspace, allowing users to run shell commands without leaving the editor environment. It can be toggled via View → Terminal, the Command Palette (View: Toggle Integrated Terminal), or the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+'). Users may open multiple terminals in tabs or split panes, rename them, and kill sessions individually, directly within the editor UI. This terminal hosts any shell installed on the system—Bash, Zsh, PowerShell, Fish, Git Bash, WSL, etc.—and detects available profiles automatically, making it simple to switch contexts via the dropdown menu or the Terminal: Select Default Profile command. Beyond basic command execution, VS Code's shell integration also contains clickable file links, working directory awareness, and error-detection markers in the scrollbar. These enhancements simplify tracing errors and navigating code paths by allowing direct jumps to source files, preserving the current working directory context, and highlighting problems inline within the terminal's scroll bar. Visual Studio Code can be extended via extensions. Users may install extensions from the VS Code Marketplace to add language support, editor, themes, debuggers, and additional utilities. A notable feature is the ability to create extensions that add support for new languages, themes, debuggers, time travel debuggers, perform static code analysis, and add code linters using the Language Server Protocol. Source control is a built-in feature of Visual Studio Code. It has a dedicated tab inside the menu bar where users can access version control settings and view changes made to the current project. To use the feature, Visual Studio Code must be linked to any supported version control system (Git, Apache Subversion, Perforce, etc.). This allows users to create repositories and to make push and pull requests directly from the Visual Studio Code program. Visual Studio Code collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve the product. This telemetry feature can be disabled. The information contained in this telemetry data can be inspected by the public, since the product is open source. VS Code supports remote development through extensions such as Remote–SSH, Remote–Containers, and Remote–WSL. These tools enable users to connect to and develop within remote environments, including servers and containers. Visual Studio Code for the Web (accessible at vscode.dev) allows users to edit files directly in a web browser without the need to install the desktop application. This version supports basic editing tasks and integration with remote repositories. VS Code Insiders is a nightly build version of this code editor, providing users with the opportunity to experience new features, bug fixes, and improvements ahead of their official release. It is compiled every night based on the latest changes from the development team, allowing users to test and provide feedback before these updates are officially released in the stable version. This version is completely independent of the standard version, meaning users can install and run both simultaneously without any interference between their settings, extensions, or themes. This design enables developers to explore and experiment with the latest features of the code editor without affecting their primary development environment. Reception In the 2016 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Visual Studio Code ranked 13th among the top popular development tools, with only 7% of the 47,000 respondents using it. Two years later, Visual Studio Code rose to the no. 1 spot, with 35% of the 75,000 respondents using it. Since then Visual Studio Code has retained the no. 1 spot, with the percentage of respondents reporting using it increasing to 50% in 2019, 74.5% in 2021, 74.48% in 2022, 73.71% in 2023, 73.6% in 2024, and 75.9% in 2025. (The 2020 Developers Survey did not cover integrated development environments.) See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC] | [TOKENS: 6301] |
Contents BASIC BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1964. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn. In addition to the programming language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became popular on minicomputer systems like the PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their history to one of these versions of BASIC. The emergence of microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of multiple BASIC dialects, including Microsoft BASIC in 1975. Due to the tiny main memory available on these machines, often 4 KB, a variety of Tiny BASIC dialects were also created. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era and became the de facto programming language for home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s. These PCs almost always had a BASIC interpreter installed by default, often in the machine's firmware or sometimes on a ROM cartridge. BASIC declined in popularity in the 1990s, as more powerful microcomputers came to market and programming languages with advanced features (such as Pascal and C) became tenable on such computers. By then, most nontechnical personal computer users relied on pre-written applications rather than writing their own programs. In 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic, combining an updated version of BASIC with a visual forms builder. This reignited use of the language and "VB" remains a major programming language in the form of VB.NET, while a hobbyist scene for BASIC more broadly continues to exist. Origin John G. Kemeny was the chairman of the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department. Based largely on his reputation as an innovator in math teaching, in 1959 the college won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award for $500,000 to build a new department building. Thomas E. Kurtz had joined the department in 1956, and from the 1960s Kemeny and Kurtz agreed on the need for programming literacy among students outside the traditional STEM fields. Kemeny later noted that "Our vision was that every student on campus should have access to a computer, and any faculty member should be able to use a computer in the classroom whenever appropriate. It was as simple as that." Kemeny and Kurtz had made two previous experiments with simplified languages, DARSIMCO (Dartmouth Simplified Code) and DOPE (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment). These did not progress past a single freshman class. New experiments using Fortran and ALGOL followed, but Kurtz concluded these languages were too tricky for what they desired. As Kurtz noted, Fortran had numerous oddly formed commands, notably an "almost impossible-to-memorize convention for specifying a loop: DO 100 I = 1, 10, 2. Is it '1, 10, 2' or '1, 2, 10', and is the comma after the line number required or not?" Moreover, the lack of any sort of immediate feedback was a key problem; the machines of the era used batch processing and took a long time to complete a run of a program. While Kurtz was visiting MIT, John McCarthy suggested that time-sharing offered a solution; a single machine could divide up its processing time among many users, giving them the illusion of having a (slow) computer to themselves. Small programs would return results in a few seconds. This led to increasing interest in a system using time-sharing and a new language specifically for use by non-STEM students. Kemeny wrote the first version of BASIC. The acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. The new language was heavily patterned on FORTRAN II; statements were one-to-a-line, numbers were used to indicate the target of loops and branches, and many of the commands were similar or identical to Fortran. However, the syntax was changed wherever it could be improved. For instance, the difficult to remember DO loop was replaced by the much easier to remember FOR I = 1 TO 10 STEP 2, and the line number used in the DO was instead indicated by the NEXT I.[a] Likewise, the cryptic IF statement of Fortran, whose syntax matched a particular instruction of the machine on which it was originally written, became the simpler IF I=5 THEN GOTO 100. These changes made the language much less idiosyncratic while still having an overall structure and feel similar to the original FORTRAN. The project received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, which was used to purchase a GE-225 computer for processing, and a Datanet-30 realtime processor to handle the Teletype Model 33 teleprinters used for input and output. A team of a dozen undergraduates worked on the project for about a year, writing both the DTSS system and the BASIC compiler. The first version BASIC language was released on 1 May 1964. Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with matrix arithmetic support from its initial implementation as a batch language, and character string functionality being added by 1965. Usage in the university rapidly expanded, requiring the main CPU to be replaced by a GE-235, and still later by a GE-635. By the early 1970s there were hundreds of terminals connected to the machines at Dartmouth, some of them remotely. Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the compiler available free of charge. In the 1960s, software became a chargeable commodity; until then, it was provided without charge as a service with expensive computers, usually available only to lease. They also made it available to high schools in the Hanover, New Hampshire, area and regionally throughout New England on Teletype Model 33 and Model 35 teleprinter terminals connected to Dartmouth via dial-up phone lines, and they put considerable effort into promoting the language. In the following years, as other dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC dialect became known as Dartmouth BASIC. New Hampshire recognized the accomplishment in 2019 when it erected a highway historical marker in Hanover describing the creation of "the first user-friendly programming language". Standards Spread on time-sharing services The emergence of BASIC took place as part of a wider movement toward time-sharing systems. First conceptualized during the late 1950s, the idea became so dominant in the computer industry by the early 1960s that its proponents were speaking of a future in which users would "buy time on the computer much the same way that the average household buys power and water from utility companies". General Electric, having worked on the Dartmouth project, wrote their own underlying operating system and launched an online time-sharing system known as Mark I. It featured BASIC as one of its primary selling points. Other companies in the emerging field quickly followed suit; Tymshare introduced SUPER BASIC in 1968, CompuServe had a version on the DEC-10 at their launch in 1969, and by the early 1970s BASIC was largely universal on general-purpose mainframe computers. Even IBM eventually joined the club with the introduction of VS-BASIC in 1973. Although time-sharing services with BASIC were successful for a time, the widespread success predicted earlier was not to be. The emergence of minicomputers during the same period, and especially low-cost microcomputers in the mid-1970s, allowed anyone to purchase and run their own systems rather than buy online time which was typically billed at dollars per minute.[b] Spread on minicomputers BASIC, by its very nature of being small, was naturally suited to porting to the minicomputer market, which was emerging at the same time as the time-sharing services. These machines had small main memory, perhaps as little as 4 KB in modern terminology,[c] and lacked high-performance storage like hard drives that make compilers practical. On these systems, BASIC was normally implemented as an interpreter rather than a compiler due to its lower requirement for working memory.[d] A particularly important example was HP Time-Shared BASIC, which, like the original Dartmouth system, used two computers working together to implement a time-sharing system. The first, a low-end machine in the HP 2100 series, was used to control user input and save and load their programs to tape or disk. The other, a high-end version of the same underlying machine, ran the programs and generated output. For a cost of about $100,000, one could own a machine capable of running between 16 and 32 users at the same time. The system, bundled as the HP 2000, was the first mini platform to offer time-sharing and was an immediate runaway success, catapulting HP to become the third-largest vendor in the minicomputer space, behind DEC and Data General (DG). DEC, the leader in the minicomputer space since the mid-1960s, had initially ignored BASIC. This was due to their work with RAND Corporation, who had purchased a PDP-6 to run their JOSS language, which was conceptually very similar to BASIC. This led DEC to introduce a smaller, cleaned up version of JOSS known as FOCAL, which they heavily promoted in the late 1960s. However, with timesharing systems widely offering BASIC, and all of their competition in the minicomputer space doing the same, DEC's customers were clamoring for BASIC. After management repeatedly ignored their pleas, David H. Ahl took it upon himself to buy a BASIC for the PDP-8, which was a major success in the education market. By the early 1970s, FOCAL and JOSS had been forgotten and BASIC had become almost universal in the minicomputer market. DEC would go on to introduce their updated version, BASIC-PLUS, for use on the RSTS/E time-sharing operating system. During this period a number of simple text-based games were written in BASIC, most notably Mike Mayfield's Star Trek. David Ahl collected these, some ported from FOCAL, and published them in an educational newsletter he compiled. He later collected a number of these into book form, 101 BASIC Computer Games, published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a small computer for education use, an early personal computer. When management refused to support the concept, Ahl left DEC in 1974 to found the seminal computer magazine, Creative Computing. The book remained popular, and was re-published on several occasions. Explosive growth: the home computer era The introduction of the first microcomputers in the mid-1970s was the start of explosive growth for BASIC. It had the advantage that it was fairly well known to the young designers and computer hobbyists who took an interest in microcomputers, many of whom had seen BASIC on minis or mainframes. Despite Dijkstra's famous judgment in 1975, "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration", BASIC was one of the few languages that was both high-level enough to be usable by those without training and small enough to fit into the microcomputers of the day, making it the de facto standard programming language on early microcomputers. The first microcomputer version of BASIC was co-written by Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff for their newly formed company, Micro-Soft. This was released by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, immediately cementing BASIC as the primary language of early microcomputers. Members of the Homebrew Computer Club began circulating copies of the program, causing Gates to write his Open Letter to Hobbyists, complaining about this early example of software piracy. Partially in response to Gates's letter, and partially to make an even smaller BASIC that would run usefully on 4 KB machines,[e] Bob Albrecht urged Dennis Allison to write their own variation of the language. How to design and implement a stripped-down version of an interpreter for the BASIC language was covered in articles by Allison in the first three quarterly issues of the People's Computer Company newsletter published in 1975 and implementations with source code published in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia: Running Light Without Overbyte. This led to a wide variety of Tiny BASICs with added features or other improvements, with versions from Tom Pittman and Li-Chen Wang becoming particularly well known. Micro-Soft, by this time Microsoft, ported their interpreter for the MOS 6502, which quickly become one of the most popular microprocessors of the 8-bit era. When new microcomputers began to appear, notably the "1977 trinity" of the TRS-80, Commodore PET and Apple II, they either included a version of the MS code, or quickly introduced new models with it. Ohio Scientific's personal computers also joined this trend at that time. By 1978, MS BASIC was a de facto standard and practically every home computer of the 1980s included it in ROM. Upon boot, a BASIC interpreter in direct mode was presented. Commodore Business Machines includes Commodore BASIC, based on Microsoft BASIC. The Apple II and TRS-80 each have two versions of BASIC: a smaller introductory version with the initial releases of the machines and a Microsoft-based version introduced as interest in the platforms increased. As new companies entered the field, additional versions were added that subtly changed the BASIC family. The Atari 8-bit computers use the 8 KB Atari BASIC which is not derived from Microsoft BASIC. Sinclair BASIC was introduced in 1980 with the Sinclair ZX80, and was later extended for the Sinclair ZX81 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The BBC-published BBC BASIC, developed by Acorn Computers, incorporates extra structured programming keywords and floating-point features. As the popularity of BASIC grew in this period, computer magazines published complete source code in BASIC for video games, utilities, and other programs. Given BASIC's straightforward nature, it was a simple matter to type in the code from the magazine and execute the program. Different magazines were published featuring programs for specific computers, though some BASIC programs were considered universal and could be used in machines running any variant of BASIC (sometimes with minor adaptations). Many books of type-in programs were also available, and in particular, Ahl published versions of the original 101 BASIC games converted into the Microsoft dialect and published it from Creative Computing as BASIC Computer Games. This book, and its sequels, provided hundreds of ready-to-go programs that could be easily converted to practically any BASIC-running platform. The book reached the stores in 1978, just as the home computer market was starting off, and it became the first million-selling computer book. Later packages, such as Learn to Program BASIC would also have gaming as an introductory focus. On the business-focused CP/M computers which soon became widespread in small business environments, Microsoft BASIC (MBASIC) was one of the leading applications. In 1978, David Lien published the first edition of The BASIC Handbook: An Encyclopedia of the BASIC Computer Language, documenting keywords across over 78 different computers. By 1981, the second edition documented keywords from over 250 different computers, showcasing the explosive growth of the microcomputer era. IBM PC and compatibles When IBM was designing the IBM PC, they followed the paradigm of existing home computers in having a built-in BASIC interpreter. They sourced this from Microsoft – IBM Cassette BASIC – but Microsoft also produced several other versions of BASIC for MS-DOS/PC DOS including IBM Disk BASIC (BASIC D), IBM BASICA (BASIC A), GW-BASIC (a BASICA-compatible version that did not need IBM's ROM) and QBasic, all typically bundled with the machine. In addition they produced the Microsoft QuickBASIC Compiler (1985) for power users and hobbyists, and the Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System (PDS) for professional programmers. Turbo Pascal-publisher Borland published Turbo Basic 1.0 in 1985 (successor versions were marketed under the name PowerBASIC). On Unix-like systems, specialized implementations were created such as XBasic and X11-Basic. XBasic was ported to Microsoft Windows as XBLite, and cross-platform variants such as SmallBasic, yabasic, Bywater BASIC, nuBasic, MyBasic, Logic Basic, Liberty BASIC, and wxBasic emerged. FutureBASIC and Chipmunk Basic meanwhile targeted the Apple Macintosh, while yab is a version of yabasic optimized for BeOS, ZETA and Haiku. These later variations introduced many extensions, such as improved string manipulation and graphics support, access to the file system and additional data types. More important were the facilities for structured programming, including additional control structures and proper subroutines supporting local variables. The addition of an integrated development environment (IDE) and electronic Help files made the products easier to work with and supported learning tools and school curriculum. In 1989, Microsoft Press published Learn BASIC Now, a book-and-software system designed to teach BASIC programming to self-taught learners who were using IBM-PC compatible systems and the Apple Macintosh. Learn BASIC Now included software disks containing the Microsoft QuickBASIC Interpreter and a programming tutorial written by Michael Halvorson and David Rygmyr. Learning systems like Learn BASIC Now popularized structured BASIC and helped QuickBASIC reach an installed base of four million active users. By the late 1980s, many users were using pre-made applications written by others rather than learning programming themselves, and professional developers had a wide range of advanced languages available on small computers. C and later C++ became the languages of choice for professional "shrink wrap" application development. A niche that BASIC continued to fill was for hobbyist video game development, as game creation systems and readily available game engines were still in their infancy. The Atari ST had STOS BASIC while the Amiga had AMOS BASIC for this purpose. Microsoft first exhibited BASIC for game development with DONKEY.BAS for GW-BASIC, and later GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS for QuickBASIC. QBasic maintained an active game development community, which helped later spawn the QB64 and FreeBASIC implementations. An early example of this market is the QBasic software package Microsoft Game Shop (1990), a hobbyist-inspired release that included six "arcade-style" games that were easily customizable in QBasic. In 2013, a game written in QBasic and compiled with QB64 for modern computers entitled Black Annex was released on Steam. Blitz Basic, Dark Basic, SdlBasic, Super Game System Basic, PlayBASIC, CoolBasic, AllegroBASIC, ethosBASIC, GLBasic and Basic4GL further filled this demand, right up to the modern RCBasic, NaaLaa, AppGameKit, Monkey 2, and Cerberus-X. Visual Basic In 1991, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic, an evolutionary development of QuickBASIC. It included constructs from that language such as block-structured control statements, parameterized subroutines and optional static typing as well as object-oriented constructs from other languages such as "With" and "For Each". The language retained some compatibility with its predecessors, such as the Dim keyword for declarations, "Gosub"/Return statements and optional line numbers which could be used to locate errors. An important driver for the development of Visual Basic was as the new macro language for Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet program. To the surprise of many at Microsoft who still initially marketed it as a language for hobbyists, the language came into widespread use for small custom business applications shortly after the release of VB version 3.0, which is widely considered the first relatively stable version. Microsoft also spun it off as Visual Basic for Applications and Embedded Visual Basic. While many advanced programmers still scoffed at its use, VB met the needs of small businesses efficiently as by that time, computers running Windows 3.1 had become fast enough that many business-related processes could be completed "in the blink of an eye" even using a "slow" language, as long as large amounts of data were not involved. Many small business owners found they could create their own small, yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs. Eventually, during the lengthy lifetime of VB3, knowledge of Visual Basic had become a marketable job skill. Microsoft also produced VBScript in 1996 and Visual Basic .NET in 2001. The latter has essentially the same power as C# and Java but with syntax that reflects the original Basic language, and also features some cross-platform capability through implementations such as Mono-Basic. The IDE, with its event-driven GUI builder, was also influential on other rapid application development tools, most notably Borland Software's Delphi for Object Pascal and its own descendants such as Lazarus. Mainstream support for the final version 6.0 of the original Visual Basic ended on March 31, 2005, followed by extended support in March 2008. Owing to its persistent remaining popularity, third-party attempts to further support it exist. On February 2, 2017, Microsoft announced that development on VB.NET would no longer be in parallel with that of C#, and on March 11, 2020, it was announced that evolution of the VB.NET language had also concluded. Even so, the language was still supported. Post-1990 versions and dialects Many other BASIC dialects have also sprung up since 1990, including the open source QB64 and FreeBASIC, inspired by QBasic, and the Visual Basic-styled RapidQ, HBasic, Basic For Qt and Gambas. Modern commercial incarnations include PureBasic, PowerBASIC, Xojo, Monkey X and True BASIC (the direct successor to Dartmouth BASIC from a company controlled by Kurtz). Several web-based simple BASIC interpreters also now exist, including Microsoft's Small Basic and Google's wwwBASIC. A number of compilers also exist that convert BASIC into JavaScript. such as NS Basic. Building from earlier efforts such as Mobile Basic, many dialects are now available for smartphones and tablets. On game consoles, an application for the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo DSi called Petit Computer allows for programming in a slightly modified version of BASIC with DS button support. A version has also been released for Nintendo Switch, which has also been supplied a version of the Fuze Code System, a BASIC variant first implemented as a custom Raspberry Pi machine. Previously BASIC was made available on consoles as Family BASIC (for the Nintendo Famicom) and PSX Chipmunk Basic (for the original PlayStation), while yabasic was ported to the PlayStation 2 and FreeBASIC to the original Xbox. Calculators Variants of BASIC are available on graphing and otherwise programmable calculators made by Texas Instruments (TI-BASIC), HP (HP BASIC), Casio (Casio BASIC), and others. Windows command-line QBasic, a version of Microsoft QuickBASIC without the linker to make EXE files, is present in the Windows NT and DOS-Windows 95 streams of operating systems and can be obtained for more recent releases like Windows 7 which do not have them. Prior to DOS 5, the Basic interpreter was GW-Basic. QuickBasic is part of a series of three languages issued by Microsoft for the home and office power user and small-scale professional development; QuickC and QuickPascal are the other two. For Windows 95 and 98, which do not have QBasic installed by default, they can be copied from the installation disc, which will have a set of directories for old and optional software; other missing commands like Exe2Bin and others are in these same directories. Other The various Microsoft, Lotus, and Corel office suites and related products are programmable with Visual Basic in one form or another, including LotusScript, which is very similar to VBA 6. The Host Explorer terminal emulator uses WWB as a macro language; or more recently the programme and the suite in which it is contained is programmable in an in-house Basic variant known as Hummingbird Basic. The VBScript variant is used for programming web content, Outlook 97, Internet Explorer, and the Windows Script Host. WSH also has a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) engine installed as the third of the default engines along with VBScript, JScript, and the numerous proprietary or open source engines which can be installed like PerlScript, a couple of Rexx-based engines, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Delphi, XLNT, PHP, and others; meaning that the two versions of Basic can be used along with the other mentioned languages, as well as LotusScript, in a WSF file, through the component object model, and other WSH and VBA constructions. VBScript is one of the languages that can be accessed by the 4DOS, 4NT, and Take Command enhanced shells. SaxBasic and WWB are also very similar to the Visual Basic line of Basic implementations. The pre-Office 97 macro language for Microsoft Word is known as WordBASIC. Excel 4 and 5 use Visual Basic itself as a macro language. Chipmunk Basic, an interpreter similar to BASICs of the 1970s, is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Legacy The ubiquity of BASIC interpreters on personal computers was such that textbooks once included simple "Try It In BASIC" exercises that encouraged students to experiment with mathematical and computational concepts on classroom or home computers. Popular computer magazines of the day typically included type-in programs. Futurist and sci-fi writer David Brin mourned the loss of ubiquitous BASIC in a 2006 Salon article as have others who first used computers during this era. In turn, the article prompted Microsoft to develop and release Small Basic; it also inspired similar projects like Basic-256 and the web-based Quite Basic. Dartmouth held a 50th anniversary celebration for BASIC on 1 May 2014. The pedagogical use of BASIC has been followed by other languages, such as Pascal, Java and particularly Python. Dartmouth College celebrated the 50th anniversary of the BASIC language with a day of events on April 30, 2014. A short documentary film was produced for the event. Syntax Minimal versions of BASIC had only integer variables and one- or two-letter variable names, which minimized requirements of limited and expensive memory (RAM). More powerful versions had floating-point arithmetic, and variables could be labelled with names six or more characters long. There were some problems and restrictions in early implementations; for example, Applesoft BASIC allowed variable names to be several characters long, but only the first two were significant, thus it was possible to inadvertently write a program with variables "LOSS" and "LOAN", which would be treated as being the same; assigning a value to "LOAN" would silently overwrite the value intended as "LOSS". Keywords could not be used in variables in many early BASICs; "SCORE" would be interpreted as "SC" OR "E", where OR was a keyword. String variables are usually distinguished in many microcomputer dialects by having $ suffixed to their name as a sigil, and values are often identified as strings by being delimited by "double quotation marks". Arrays in BASIC could contain integers, floating point or string variables. Some dialects of BASIC supported matrices and matrix operations, which can be used to solve sets of simultaneous linear algebraic equations. These dialects would directly support matrix operations such as assignment, addition, multiplication (of compatible matrix types), and evaluation of a determinant. Many microcomputer BASICs did not support this data type; matrix operations were still possible, but had to be programmed explicitly on array elements. New BASIC programmers on a home computer might start with a simple program, perhaps using the language's PRINT statement to display a message on the screen; a well-known and often-replicated example is Kernighan and Ritchie's "Hello, World!" program: An infinite loop could be used to fill the display with the message: Note that the END statement is optional and has no action in most dialects of BASIC. It was not always included, as is the case in this example. This same program can be modified to print a fixed number of messages using the common FOR...NEXT statement: Most home computers BASIC versions, such as MSX BASIC and GW-BASIC, supported simple data types, loop cycles, and arrays. The following example is written for GW-BASIC, but will work in most versions of BASIC with minimal changes: The resulting dialog might resemble: The original Dartmouth Basic was unusual in having a matrix keyword, MAT.[f] Although not implemented by most later microprocessor derivatives, it is used in this example from the 1968 manual which averages the numbers that are input: Second-generation BASICs (for example, VAX Basic, SuperBASIC, True BASIC, QuickBASIC, BBC BASIC, Pick BASIC, PowerBASIC, Liberty BASIC, QB64 and (arguably) COMAL) introduced a number of features into the language, primarily related to structured and procedure-oriented programming. Usually, line numbering is omitted from the language and replaced with labels (for GOTO) and procedures to encourage easier and more flexible design. In addition keywords and structures to support repetition, selection and procedures with local variables were introduced. The following example is in Microsoft QuickBASIC: Third-generation BASIC dialects such as Visual Basic, Xojo, Gambas, StarOffice Basic, BlitzMax and PureBasic introduced features to support object-oriented and event-driven programming paradigm. Most built-in procedures and functions are now represented as methods of standard objects rather than operators. Also, the operating system became increasingly accessible to the BASIC language. The following example is in Visual Basic .NET: Compilers and interpreters See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Start] | [TOKENS: 378] |
Contents Microsoft Start Microsoft Start was a web portal that featured news headlines and articles that MSN editors chose. The app included sections for top stories, regional events, international events, politics, money, technology, entertainment, opinion, sports, and crime, along with other miscellaneous stories. The app was available for Android and iOS devices only; other users used its web version. Microsoft Start was the planned successor to Microsoft News and MSN, which are also available for Windows. With the release of Windows 11, however, Microsoft directly integrated news into Windows taskbar, and was later backported to Windows 10. Microsoft sends unsolicited "Start Daily" news bulletins to its Outlook mail customers unless they block or unsubscribe from the service.[citation needed] From November 2024, the Microsoft Start website and app were rebranded back to the MSN brand, ending Microsoft's attempts of rebranding MSN. Predecessor Microsoft News (formerly MSN News and Bing News) is the predecessor of Microsoft Start. It has been included with Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. It is still available on the Microsoft Store. It allows users to set their own favorite topics and sources, receive notifications of breaking news though alerts, filter preferred news sources, and alter font sizes to make articles easier to read. Originally, News included an RSS feed, but that capability was removed; Microsoft currently only allows users to subscribe to specified news sources. News uses the live tile feature introduced in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. If a user clicks on the News Start menu tile when a particular story is shown, the user will see a link to that story at the top of the app when it launches. References External links This article about software created, produced or developed by Microsoft is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Programming_Language] | [TOKENS: 145] |
Contents Microsoft Visual Programming Language Microsoft Visual Programming Language, or VPL, is a visual programming and dataflow programming language developed by Microsoft for the Microsoft Robotics Studio. VPL is based on the event-driven and data-driven approach. The programming language is distinguished from other Microsoft programming languages such as Visual Basic and C#, as it is the only Microsoft language that is a true visual programming language. Microsoft has utilized the term "Visual" in its previous programming products to reflect that a large degree of development in these languages can be performed by "dragging and dropping" in a traditional wysiwyg fashion. See also References Further reading External links This programming-language-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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