Microsoft., 30 years old (again)

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Microsoft is celebrating its 30th
anniversary at the company’s annual meeting today (sadly I'll not be
there - in Paris - but will try to view the internal webcast).

Red Herring

"The annual meeting at Safeco Field in Seattle
is expected to draw 16,000 Redmond-based employees who will be
addressed by top Microsoft executives. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
and CEO Steve Ballmer are expected to talk about the company’s future
and innovations in the areas of graphics, speech recognition, signal
processing, facial-expression mapping, and quantum computing."

Oh well, ce la vie...

From the Microsoft press release:

“As I think about the last
30 years," said Gates, commenting on the anniversary, "I’m most proud
of our making 'big bets' on technologies like the graphical user
interface or Web services and watching them grow into something people
rely on every day. And the long-term research we’re doing today on some
of computer science’s toughest challenges – such as helping computers
listen, speak, learn and understand – will lead to what I think will be
the next wave of growth and innovation for our industry.”

I put some links together in February relating to Microsoft's 30th birthday, mainly historical stuff.

More recently, there is Microsoft's 20-year-club:

"Microsoft celebrates its
30th anniversary this week, a milestone that gives pause to many of the
company’s seasoned employees and inspires them to reflect on their
careers and on the events and technology achievements that defined
Microsoft’s history. To mark the occasion, PressPass spoke to a group
of employees who share the distinction of working at Microsoft for two
decades or longer."

One of the five 'seasoned employees'
featured in the article is Christine Betts (a fellow Brit in based in
Redmond) who was kind enough to offer me lots of good advice when I
moved over. I didn't realise Christine has been with the company 20
years (one of 71 others)!

Update: 24 Sept 2005: