Microsoft, in one file

What is inside

• 12 analyses of Microsoft, in full, each with its numbered sources.
• 5 years of revenue, operating income and net income, from its annual reports.
• 18 defining decisions on record, with how the shares did against the US market a year and three years on, where measured.
• Its own words. What it said in its filings about its workforce, the deals it named and the competitors it names, each quote with its filing.

If you have an interview at Microsoft

The dossier is the short way to know its strategy before you walk in: the decisions that defined Microsoft and why it made them, 5 years of its results, and what it says in its own filings about its workforce, its deals and its competitors. It works the same way before a client meeting or a pitch.

The analyses it carries

• Microsoft Was Winning the Last War in FY2014 — Nadella Made It Fight the Next One
• Microsoft's CEO search shortlisted six names — then hired the insider it had all along
• Microsoft's own filings called the Xbox a 'negative margin console' — Windows and Office covered the gap
• In 2018 Microsoft dropped 'Windows' from its top executive's title and buried the OS one level down
• The 1980 IBM contract barred IBM from reselling DOS — and left Microsoft free to sell it to everyone
• Microsoft Handed Yahoo 88% of Search Revenue in 2009 — and Wrote the Step-Ups Into the Contract
• Microsoft kept Copilot's $30 seat and stacked a metered track for AI agents beside it
• Microsoft Abandoned Its Own Ecosystem to Launch the Zune — Revenue Fell 54% in One Holiday Season
• Kinect Sold 8 Million in 60 Days. Then Microsoft Strapped It to a Console Nobody Wanted at $499.
• Windows Revenue Rose While Microsoft Grew to $281.7B — a Margin Upgrade Dressed as Disruption
• Microsoft's Breakup Order Died When the Judge Called Gates 'Napoleonic' to Reporters
• Ballmer Overrode Microsoft's Board to Buy Nokia; the $7.5 Billion Write-Off Took Two Years

Each analysis is free to read on the site. The dossier puts them together with the numbers and the filings, in one document you can keep.