50 years of Microsoft We will remember these four things for a long time to come

Microsoft once started out in a garage - and became a tech legend. Four moments show how the company shaped our lives, made us laugh and sometimes got on our last nerve.

When was Microsoft founded?

It all began on April 4, 1975 as a garage company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The big breakthrough came with an ingenious coup: when the IT company IBM was looking for an operating system for its first PC in 1980, Microsoft promised to deliver one - but didn't have one yet. Without further ado, Gates and Allen bought an existing system (QDOS) for around 50,000 dollars and licensed it to IBM. The key: Microsoft retained the rights to the system. The starting signal had been given.

Every decision or change to Microsoft products has had a global impact - both good and bad - and some of them have turned into nostalgic memories or amuse the online community over the years. Here are some moments when Microsoft made its mark on the computing industry:

Since the first versions of Windows, a so-called "Blue Screen of Death" has been displayed when the operating system encounters a program or hardware error.

This is often a completely blue screen with white text - originally created by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer - indicating the problem. Some also contain error codes that are intended to help experts or experienced users.

The newer versions of Windows accompany this message with a smiley with a sad face. Often the only way to escape the message is to switch the computer off and on again - a possibility joked about in the British series "The IT Crowd".

This is one of the most famous landscapes in the computer world: a green hill, including a bright blue sky with clouds.The "Bliss" wallpaper, which came onto the market with Windows XP 2001, now awakens nostalgic feelings in everyone who grew up with computers in the 90s and 2000s and experienced a time with PC games and online messengers such as MSN Messenger.

Where does the picture actually come from?

The barely edited original photo was taken in 1996 in Sonoma County, California, by wine photographer Chuck O'Rear, who discovered the idyllic landscape as he drove past it in his car.

This background image, which according to Microsoft is seen by billions of people around the world, has led to numerous parodies and reuses: For example, it can be seen in the video game "Emily is away", an independent title from 2015 based on 90s nostalgia.

In June 2023, Microsoft released a slightly modified and higher quality version of "Bliss", in which the shadows were shifted slightly, the outlines of the clouds were softened and dandelions were added.

Since the 1995 edition of Windows, a jingle of chimes and electronic sounds has greeted users when they start the operating system. The soothing, gentle melody was composed by a legend of electronic music, Brian Eno, who described the piece to the news site SFGate in 1996 as "a tiny little gem".

The musician composed 84 clips before selecting this short, cult excerpt, which is nevertheless twice as long as the originally planned three and a quarter seconds.

For the slightly younger readers among us: the jingle was also adapted with the Windows XP release. Perhaps this soundtrack sounds more familiar to you:

Long before the chatbot ChatGPT, Microsoft provided users of its Office suite - Word and Excel are the best-known programs - with a personal assistant back in the 1990s. Affectionately called "Clippy" by some users, this small, animated paperclip with slightly too big eyes appeared regularly to give advice, which often came unsolicited.

His incessant and intrusive "It looks like you're writing a letter" messages led to numerous parodies and humorous variations on the Internet.

An independent developer has brought "Clippy" into 2023 by developing an application that allows you to address ChatGPT via the famous paperclip.

Between vision and failure

Not everything was a success: Microsoft missed the importance of the open Internet and underestimated the smartphone - a fatal miscalculation, as Steve Ballmer's viral mockery of the first iPhone shows. The company also tried to slow down competitors such as Netscape with gagging contracts - which almost led to its break-up.

It was only under CEO Satya Nadella (since 2014) that the company managed to change course: opening up to the cloud, AI partnership with OpenAI and more platform independence. This is how Microsoft is entering the next half-century - with a lot of history behind it and new visions in sight.