Microsoft rounds off 2025 with one final Windows 11 feature update here’s what’s new and fixed
It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices. In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named Microsoft Azure Information Protection. On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced the merge of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft’s gaming in the future. The successor to Windows Phone 8.1, Windows 10 Mobile, was released November 20, 2015. On July 29, 2015, Microsoft released the next version of the Windows operating system, Windows 10.
- Microsoft entered the personal digital assistant (PDA) market in November with Windows CE 1.0, a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other small computers.
- The company released Microsoft Bob, a graphical user interface designed for novice computer users, in March 1995.
- The deal also made Viacom a preferred publisher partner for casual game development and distribution through MSN and Windows.
- It was an immediate success; 5,000 cards, a large number given the microcomputer market at the time, were purchased in the initial three months at $349 (~$1,112 in 2024) each and it was Microsoft’s number one revenue source in 1980.
Microsoft has just released its final security update (KB ) for Windows 11 in 2025, and with it comes a handful of new features and changes that cap off the year. Microsoft already employs more than 22,000 people across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurugram, Noida, and other cities, including engineering teams that build AI products such as Copilot Studio, Azure AI Search, AI agents, speech and translation tools, and Azure Machine Learning for global markets, while also supporting the company’s domestic operations. The push has accelerated this year, with OpenAI and Anthropic setting up offices in India, and Google and Perplexity striking partnerships with major telecom operators Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, respectively, to deepen their reach in the market.
1994: Windows and Office
Microsoft launched their second console, the Xbox 360, in 2005 – which was more successful than the original. Microsoft entered the multibillion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo, with the release of the Xbox. The operating system was the first to require Microsoft pin up casino Product Activation, an anti-piracy mechanism that requires users to activate the software with Microsoft within 30 days.
Follow Windows Central on Google News to keep our latest news, insights, and features at the top of your feeds! Microsoft has shipped lots of new features and updates to Windows 11 in 2025, delivering a constant stream of features and changes on a monthly cadence, whether users have liked it or not. Of course, as is always the case with Windows updates, many of these features are rolling out in waves, which means you might not see them all right away once you’ve installed today’s update. You can learn more about the new features that are rolling out with today’s update in our dedicated article that explains every new feature that’s now available.
Microsoft investing $17.5 billion in India for AI and cloud infrastructure
The deal allowed Microsoft to license many shows from Viacom owned cable television and film studios for use on Xbox Live and MSN. On December 19, 2007, Microsoft signed a five-year, $500 million (~$727 million in 2024) contract with Viacom that included content sharing and advertisements. Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, the next versions of the company’s server operating system and development suite, respectively, were released on February 27, 2008.
Nonetheless, the Indian government has been pushing aggressively to draw more big-tech investment, framing large-scale data-center and AI projects as central to its economic and digital-public-infrastructure ambitions. Additionally, Microsoft said its skilling efforts are also accelerating, noting that through its “ADVANTA(I)GE India” initiative, it has trained 5.6 million people since January — well ahead of its goal of training 10 million by 2030 — with the programs enabling more than 125,000 individuals to secure jobs or start businesses. The offerings would help enterprises meet regulatory and data-residency requirements and support high-performance workloads with access to the latest Nvidia GPUs and Microsoft 365 services, the company noted.
- (Earlier magazine on-disk distributions included Robert Uiterwyk’s BASIC in the May 1977 issue of Information Age.) However, Xenix was never sold to end users directly although it was licensed to many software OEMs for resale.
- Microsoft will launch a preview of Intune for Education “in the coming weeks”, with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $30 (~$38.00 in 2024) per device, or through volume licensing agreements.
- Due to potential copyright infringement problems with CP/M, IBM marketed both CP/M and PC DOS for US$240 and US$40, respectively, with PC DOS eventually becoming the standard because of its lower price.
- When Microsoft launched several versions of Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, they had captured over 90% market share of the world’s personal computers.
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For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for less than US$100,000, which IBM renamed to IBM PC DOS. IBM first approached Gates and Allen about Microsoft’s upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) in July 1980, shortly after Gates’s mother began working on United Way’s executive board with IBM CEO John Opel. By the mid-1980s Microsoft had gotten out of the Unix business, except for its ownership stake in SCO.
Ireland became home to one of Microsoft’s international production facilities in 1985, and on November 20 Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows (Windows 1.0), originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system. With the release of the Microsoft Mouse on May 2, 1983, Microsoft continued to expand its product line in other markets. Later, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones after Columbia Data Products successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, quickly followed by Eagle Computer and Compaq. In 1983, in collaboration with numerous companies, Microsoft created a home computer system, MSX, which contained its own version of the DOS operating system, called MSX-DOS; this became relatively popular in Japan, Europe and South America.
present: Acquisitions, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows 11
The release included an updated version of the Windows 2000 kernel, enhanced DOS emulation abilities, and many of the home-user features found in previous consumer versions. It sported several new features such as enhanced multimedia abilities and consumer-oriented PC maintenance options, but is often regarded as one of the worst versions of Windows due to stability problems, restricted real mode DOS support and other issues. The next update to the consumer line, Windows ME (or Windows Millennium Edition), was released on September 14, 2000. On June 15, 2000, the company released a new version of its hand-held operating system, Windows CE 3.0. The documents also alluded to legal and other actions against Linux as well as other open source software. Finally, a great deal of controversy took place when a set of internal memos from the company were leaked on the Internet.
In 2004, the company released Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, a version of Windows XP designed for multimedia abilities, and Windows XP Starter Edition, a version of Windows XP with a smaller feature set designed for entry-level consumers. Windows Server 2003 was launched, featuring enhanced administration abilities, such as new user interfaces to server tools. The console was also outsold by the Wii, which introduced gesture control and opened up a new market for video games.
December also saw the company rebuilding Microsoft Edge as a Chromium-based browser; it was publicly released on January 15, 2020. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. On June 8, 2017, Microsoft acquired Hexadite, an Israeli security firm, for $100 million (~$125 million in 2024). Microsoft will launch a preview of Intune for Education “in the coming weeks”, with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $30 (~$38.00 in 2024) per device, or through volume licensing agreements. Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. The server sibling to Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, was released in September 2016.
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In 2008, Microsoft wanted to purchase Yahoo (first completely, later partially) in order to strengthen its position on the search engine market vis-à-vis Google. On the advertisement side of the deal, Microsoft’s Atlas ad-serving division became the exclusive provider of previously unsold advertising inventory on Viacom owned web sites. The deal also made Viacom a preferred publisher partner for casual game development and distribution through MSN and Windows.
In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the UEFI core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. On October 8, 2017, Joe Belfiore announced that work on Windows 10 Mobile was drawing to a close due to lack of market penetration and resultant lack of interest from app developers. During the previous summer of 2015 the company wrote down $7.6 billion (~$9.8 billion in 2024) related to its mobile-phone business and fired 7,800 employees from those operations. In May 2016, the company announced it will lay off 1,850 workers, taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million (~$1.21 billion in 2024).
Microsoft launched its Indian headquarters as well, which would eventually become the company’s second largest after its U.S. headquarters. Windows 98 came with Internet Explorer 4.0 SP1 (which had Windows Desktop Update bundled), and included new features from Windows 95 OSR 2.x including the FAT32 file system, and new features designed for Windows 98, such as support for multiple displays. In November 1996, Microsoft Office 97 was released, which is the first version to include Office Assistant. While Microsoft largely failed to participate in the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, some of the key technologies in which the company had invested to enter the Internet market started to pay off by the mid-90s. Microsoft entered the personal digital assistant (PDA) market in November with Windows CE 1.0, a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other small computers. In an attempt to extend its reach in the consumer market, the company acquired WebTV, which enabled consumers to access the Web from their televisions.
Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro. Microsoft also announced a new multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment deal with OpenAI. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and holding company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth $68.7 billion. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies’ progress against OKRs. In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be the last version of the operating system; set to be released in the third quarter of 2021.
Claude Code is coming to Slack, and that’s a bigger deal than it sounds
Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft underwent a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012—the corporation’s logos, products, services and websites adopted the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. On May 10, 2011, the company acquired Skype Technologies for US$8.5 billion (~$11.7 billion in 2024). On April 12, 2010, Microsoft launched their Kin phone line, a result of their acquisition of Danger Incorporated in 2008. On June 26, 2009, Microsoft started taking pre-orders at a discounted price for Windows 7 which was launched on October 22, 2009. During the show, Ballmer announced the first public Beta Test of Windows 7 for partners and developers on January 8, but also for the general public two days later.