Software company that produces the Windows series of operating systems. Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and generally considered responsible for modern
computing.
People like to knock their near-monopolistic control of the OS market but in truth, while at times unpleasant, its almost a necessity for widespread computing due to the way
OS's work, and how software has to communicate with the OS. Those of you who dabbled with computing in the early '90s when many different computers/OS's on the market instead of just one know what I'm talking about; trying to find a particular piece of software compatible with your particular setup could be hell, and trying to code the stuff was even worse. Having a good
compiler helped of course, but it had to be kept up to date on all the latest OS builds and/or you had to do all sorts of manual
tweakage with the compiled code, neither of which was a particularly pleasant experience.
Aside from Windows, MS has released a number of things like
DirectX to make programmers' lives easier. All in all they help more than they hurt.
An
operating system is like
the lines on the road, if everyone's not using the same one
bad shit starts happening.
