Microsoft’s logo with the tagline “Your potential. Our passion.”—below the main corporate name—is based on a slogan Microsoft used in 2008. In April 2019, Microsoft became the third public U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion. It has been criticized for its monopolistic practices, and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security.
Corporate affairs
People who use their products and services often end up becoming dependent on them, a process is known as vendor lock-in. As such, it needs subsidiaries present in whatever national markets it chooses to harvest. An example is Microsoft Canada, which it established in 1985.222 Other countries have similar wildsino casino experiences installations, to funnel profits back up to Redmond and to distribute the dividends to the holders of MSFT stock.
Global
This article has been updated since it was first published for clarity and to reflect more recent stock price values. The deal marks the latest in a string of high-profile agreements and partnerships for AI chip leader Nvidia, and infrastructure deals for BlackRock, which has been eying energy providers as another way to ride the AI boom. The massive deal could be taken as another strong signal of AI demand expectations, with Nvidia, Microsoft, and BlackRock making big bets on AI-driven growth. Meet the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—your new home for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.
Visualize my data
The company is often referred to as a “Velvet Sweatshop”, a term which originated in a 1989 Seattle Times article,331 and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft’s own employees.332 This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health. AI darling Nvidia just struck another big data center deal—this time as part of a group with Microsoft, BlackRock, and others. Bill McColl has 25+ years of experience as a senior producer and writer for TV, radio, and digital media leading teams of anchors, reporters, and editors in creating news broadcasts, covering some of the most notable news stories of the time. “Embrace, extend, and extinguish” (EEE),338 also known as “embrace, extend, and exterminate,”339 is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found340 that was used internally by Microsoft341 to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage competitors. Microsoft is frequently accused of using anticompetitive tactics and abusing its monopolistic power.
Marketing
Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the company’s software. It has also been criticized for the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as “temporary”, and therefore without medical benefits), the use of forced retention tactics, which means that employees would be sued if they tried to leave.330 Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company.
