Once again, the company has fallen foul of regulators who accuse it of exploiting the monopoly of Windows, its desktop operating-system software, in order to dominate adjacent markets.
Bill Gates's software firm is not only facing a host of legal challenges to the way it does business, but is also confronted by a formidable alliance of competitors who are out to end the Windows monopoly of the desktop operating system.
Freshly launched editions of Microsoft's mainstays--the Windows operating system and Office desktop productivity suite--helped the Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft has confirmed a Start button is returning to the desktop mode's taskbar of its Windows 8 operating system.
Running Windows is all well and good, but when you're running the RT flavor, which strips compatibility with the entire, massive and still-swelling catalog of Windows applications, you're left with a desktop-class operating system completely bereft of any desktop apps.
The software giant agreed to change its freshly released Windows Vista operating system Tuesday to make it easier to use desktop search programs from competitors, bowing to a complaint by search company Google ahead of a hearing to review Microsoft's compliance with a 2002 anti-trust deal.
Running on the software giant's Windows CE operating system, a stripped-down version of its desktop software, the devices will offer a calendar, address book, memo pad, voice recorder, e-mail and limited web browsing.
The company is integrating its Internet Explorer browser and Microsoft Network content into its Windows operating system, a process that will culminate with the "Active Desktop" planned for Windows 97, due out in a few months.
Microsoft's influence stems from the dominance of its Windows operating system, which runs over 90% of the world's desktop computers.
More than 10 years after its launch, and more than six years after the launch of its successor, Windows XP is still the number two operating system with more than a third of the desktop operating system market.
Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system, which came out last fall, enables touch-screen controls so desktop and laptop computers work more like tablets.
Microsoft's Windows 95 has dominated the U.S. desktop market because of its compatibility: users buy the operating system that has the most software available, and third-party developers produce software for the system that has the most users.
Google has decided to try to turn its own technology into, in effect, a new operating system, which will run on the internet rather than the desktop, so making Windows irrelevant.
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