Microsoft’s half-century is a time for celebration and reflection

When Microsoft announced in February that it created a new state of matter — beyond solid, liquid, gas and plasma — called a “topological qubit,” which could be applied to answer mathematical, scientific and technological challenges, the world knew the little firm founded in Albuquerque, N.M., 50 years ago was now a titan of science and technology.

The breakthrough intensifies the competition on artificial intelligence but goes further. 

For more than three decades, scientists have sought a quantum computer. These machines, which utilize subatomic particles or very cold objects, would outperform even the finest supercomputers.

In December, Google announced an experimental quantum computer requiring only five minutes to finish a calculation that most supercomputers couldn’t finish in 10 septillion years — longer than the age of the universe we know, according to The New York Times.

But Microsoft’s bold move could vault it over Google to create an entirely new and vastly more powerful computer.

“Quantum computing is a thrilling prospect for physics, and for the world,” said Frank Wilczek, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This is a phenomenal surge for a little company (first called Micro-Soft) that began writing software for IBM’s first personal computer and moved from the Land of Enchantment to Bellevue in 1979 — when Jeff Bezos was in high school — and finally landed in its permanent headquarters of Redmond seven years later.

As Microsoft marks its half-century in business, one ably chronicled by my colleague Alex Halverson, it’s a good time to assess one of the most consequential companies in metropolitan Seattle.

With a market capitalization — the total value of outstanding shares — of $2.7 trillion, Microsoft is the second-most-valuable company in the world behind Apple.

Microsoft is the second-most-admired company, too, according to Fortune Magazine.

Being located here, Microsoft was instrumental in making the region a major technology center.

I first encountered the term “Microsoft millionaire” when I worked at the late, great Rocky Mountain News in Denver. It referred, of course, to early employees in the company who became wealthy as the Redmond firm prospered.

For example, Andrea Lewis, a technical writer, used her $2 million to open the Richard Hugo House, a Seattle literary center. And Jim Allchin, who helped launch Windows 98, Vista and XP as a Microsoft executive, became a blues guitarist, according to Business Insider.

The company went public on March 13, 1986. At the beginning of the trading day on the NASDAQ, shares were priced at $21 each, ultimately rising to $35.50.

Co-founder Bill Gates sold $1.6 million in shares, retaining a 45% stake in the company worth $350 million. Co-founder and childhood friend Paul Allen stopped daily work at Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. 

Three years later he founded Vulcan, a company that helped create the innovation district in South Lake Union that became the world headquarters of Amazon, as well as numerous startups and medical research operations.

Unlike Gates, Allen was a civic steward — not without critics for building where many Seattleites hoped would be a grand central park called Seattle Commons, which voters rejected.

Allen financed the restoration of Seattle’s Union Station, developing offices nearby.

According to HistoryLink, an online Washington history site, Allen’s “relationship with Gates was increasingly strained. ‘Whenever we locked horns, I’d have to raise my intensity in my blood pressure to meet Bill’s, and it was taking a toll. Some people can vent their anger, take a breath, and let it go, but I wasn’t one of them. My sinking morale sapped my enthusiasm for my work, which in turn could precipitate Bill’s next attack.’ “

Allen also restored Cinerama in Belltown, and owned the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders.

Allen died too young, in 2018, at age 65, a terrible loss as the city would soon face the COVID pandemic at a time when it most needed such philanthropists.

Back in the late 1980s, as business editor of the Dayton Daily News, I heard some stockbrokers scoff at the notion of such a company. The more tech-savvy brokers told their clients that Microsoft was the future.

Here’s a confession: I’m a lifelong Apple customer, starting with the primitive Mac I bought in 1989 to the MacBook Air on which I’m writing this column. But the reach of the company is so extensive that I’m also working on Microsoft’s Word program, first released in 1983 and continually improved. I also use Excel and PowerPoint.

By the time Boeing hit its half-century mark, founded in 1917, it had inaugurated the “jet age,” with the 707, 737 and 747. It participated in Project Apollo and built the Air Force’s B-47 and B-52 bombers, as well as facing the 1967-71 Boeing Bust.

Amazon is only 31 years old.

Microsoft came through a Clinton administration antitrust investigation and its “lost decade” as the “Beast of Redmond,” to the steady leadership of Satya Nadella. Now, Microsoft is an admired corporation.

It’s a leader of cloud computing, AI, video games and of course a variety of software.

As part of the AI strategy, Nadella’s Microsoft also invested in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

Microsoft President Brad Smith, who I first met as the “good cop” in dealing with the media, envisions a future Cascadia Innovation Corridor, running from southern Oregon to Vancouver, B.C. Among his hopes is high-speed trains — a modern conveyance enjoyed by 28 nations and opposed by President Donald Trump.

Microsoft’s relationship with the felon and leader of the 2020 insurrection to halt certification of the presidential election, who again sits in the White House, is delicate.

While the company gave $1 million to the Trump presidential inaugural fund, the administration’s Federal Trade Commission is beginning an antitrust investigation of the company.

No organization can rest easy despite a half-century of survival. Sears, Roebuck and Co. is 139 years old but today only eight stores remain of the onetime retail giant. Woolworth’s lasted from 1879 to 1997. Kmart and its parent S.S. Kresge are gone.

Microsoft’s best years may be ahead, but the United States and the world are facing unprecedented challenges, from an autocratic, tariff-driven president to human-caused climate change.

Seattle being Seattle, many may criticize Microsoft as they do Amazon.

I say, happy birthday.