10 Cool Things You'll Learn about the Software Giant on 'Microsoft by the Numbers'

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 29 Sep 2015

I bet there are lots of things you don’t know about Microsoft, things that will have you say “hey, that’s pretty cool, I did not know that.”

Lots of interesting things about the software giant are presented on the new Microsoft by the Numbers website. I went over them and picked the 10 most interesting entries.

1. Microsoft has one of the largest art collections in the world

When I hear the word “Microsoft”, I think about Windows features and annoyances, I think about the Office productivity suite, and I think about Bing’s interesting wallpapers. I certainly do not associate Microsoft with art or art collections.

Microsoft has an extensive art collection, one of the largest corporate art collections in the world. There are almost 5,000 pieces in the Microsoft Art Collection, including a chandelier by Dale Chihuly, whose works are considered unique in the field of blown glass.



The Microsoft Art Collection started in 1987 and at that time, the art pieces occupied 6 buildings. Now, they occupy more than 180 buildings around the world.

The collection’s purpose is to “create an inspiring work environment that fosters creativity and innovation.” The pieces in the Microsoft Art Collection reflect the company’s standards of innovation and creativity, represent the diverse community of Microsoft employees and customers, humanize and energize the workplace.

Visit the Microsoft Art Collection website here.


2. Microsoft’s data centers use energy very efficiently

If you care about the environment, it is important to use energy efficiently. Microsoft’s modular data centers do precisely that. They use 50% less energy than traditional data centers. Or to put it the other way around, traditional data centers use twice as much energy as Microsoft’s modular data centers.


3. Microsoft’s free email service is used by hundreds of millions

Outlook.com is the free, personal email service that Microsoft offers to people from all over the world who want to stay connected. If you need to compare Microsoft’s Outlook.com to something else so you can better understand it, then compare it to Google’s Gmail web-based email service (which lets you block specific individuals).

According to Microsoft, Outlook.com has more than 400 million active users. Outlook.com, which is available for the web, for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, is an efficient email service and its popularity can be attributed to, among other things, the fact that it helps all the users keep their communications organized.

Learn more about Outlook.com here.




4. Office for iOS and Android is quite popular

Microsoft’s Office productivity suite is made up of three main modules: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Word will meet all your text editing and word processing needs, Excel will come in handy if you work with spreadsheets, and PowerPoint will help you create engaging presentations.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are available for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating system. And they’re quite popular! “Office has been downloaded more than 100 million times on iPhones, iPad, and Android devices,” says Microsoft by the Numbers.

Do you know that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are available as web apps? Visit the Office.com website to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps for free (after you sign in with your Microsoft account).




5. More than a billion people use Office

Microsoft Office is the world’s leading productivity suite and the numbers prove it. More than 1.2 billion people use Microsoft’s Office. If that doesn’t seem too impressive to you, let me put in it another way: 1 in 7 people on Earth uses Microsoft Office.

There are tons of alternatives, if for some reason you do not want to use Microsoft Office. Ten alternative productivity suites, paid and free, are listed here.


6. Microsoft employees like French fries a lot

984,000 orders of French fries are served each year in campus cafeterias to Microsoft employees in Redmond, Washington. That’s a lot of delicious, tasty, yummy fries. A lot!

All this talk about fries makes me think about weight gain and staying in shape. And that in turn, reminds me about the Microsoft Health app, one of the apps featured in this article about apps that help you be more active and stay fit.



7. Microsoft and Microsoft employees donate a lot

Microsoft donates software to lots of nonprofit organizations around the world. On average, Microsoft donates $2.6 million in software, each day, to more than 86,000 nonprofit organizations. Microsoft donates Windows and Windows Server, Office 365, Power BI, Visual Studio, and training resources.

“In the hands of nonprofit organizations, technology can boost productivity, increase effectiveness through better collaboration, and extend services to new communities and individuals in need,” explains Microsoft on the Software Donations site.

Microsoft employees take charity so seriously that they’ve donated more than $1 billion to more than 31,000 charities, since 1983. Furthermore, they’ve volunteered more than 2.5 million hours of their time since the volunteer match program began in 2005.


8. To the moon and back, to Venus and back – multiple times

If you could take Microsoft’s fiber optic network, you could stretch it to the moon – and back. And then again to the moon – and back. And then a third time to the moon – and back. It can stretch to the moon back, three times over.

And if you were to take all the pixels from all the imagery within Bing Maps, you could make 4 round trips to Venus and still have some pixels left.


9. Billions of Skype calls on a daily basis

Here’s proof that Microsoft did not waste $8.5 billion when it purchased Skype back in 2011. The instant messaging and VoIP client is so incredibly popular that all the people who use Skype rack up to 3 billion minutes of calls, each day.

Download Skype for Windows and Skype for Mac right here on FindMySoft.


10. Windows 10 is off to a great start

More than 75 million devices from 192 countries have been upgrade to Windows 10, and that’s in just in the first month since the operating system hit general availability.

Windows 10 hit the market on July 29, 2015. It is September 29 today, two months later, and according to unofficial sources, Windows 10 has passed the 100 million installs milestone.

Microsoft’s goals are to see that Windows 10 is used on 1 billion devices by 2018.


About Microsoft by The Numbers

Sometimes, it’s easier to paint a picture with numbers than it is with words. That’s why on September 28, 2015, Microsoft announced that it is rolling out the new Microsoft by the Numbers, a site that presents interesting statistics about the software giant.

Visit Microsoft by the Numbers and see for yourself.



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