Microsoft: the key facts
- Microsoft, the software giant, bought business social network site LinkedIn for more than $26bn on Monday.
- Microsoft opened in Ireland in 1985 with a small manufacturing facility employing just over one hundred people.
- Microsoft Ireland has grown to encompass four distinct operations at its campus in Sandyford in Dublin, employing over 1,200 full time employees and 700 full-time contract staff.
- Microsoft's operations in Ireland include software development and testing, localisation, operations, finance, IT, HR and sales and marketing, both in Ireland and across Europe, Middle East and Africa.
- Microsoft employs 112,689 people worldwide.
- In the fiscal year endind June 30th 2015, Microsoft had a net revenue of $93.5 billion.
- In 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications for $8.5 billion. The company was incorporated as a division of Microsoft.
- Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 in Albuquerque, USA.
- Paul Allen came up with the original name of Micro-Soft, a mix of the words microcomputer and software. The hyphen was removed in 1979.
- This is the biggest acquisition made by Microsoft, which has completed eight takeovers worth more than $1 billion.
- It paid $8.5 billion for Skype in 2011 and bought Nokia's mobile phone business for $7.2 billion in 2013.
