Microsoft's Shares Are Having Their Best Run in the 21st Century

With Apple, Google, and Facebook hogging the news, a quick look at the forgotten giant of the tech industry

Google

The Microsoft jokes are out in force, now that the company may buy the beloved maker of the game Minecraft. Many laypeople don't consider Microsoft the juggernaut of the technology industry. That title would go to Apple, Google, or Facebook, depending on the area. And references to the company are as likely to namecheck 90s-era Clippy or new CEO Satya Nadella's unfocused memo as any product the company makes.

But a strange thing has been happening up in Seattle. The company, largely ignored by the media in favor of stories about Snapchat and hypothetical Apple products, is having its best run—at least in terms of share price—since the dot-com collapse. Since the beginning of 2013, Microsoft shares are up 76 percent.

New CEO Satya Nadella, who assumed control of the company in February, has built on the momentum the company got going in 2013. And now the company is flirting with a $400 billion market cap.

The truth is people still pay for Microsoft software and services. 1.5 billion people use Windows. 1.1 billion people use Microsoft Office. These are paying customers who helped the company bring in $86 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2014.

Microsoft may not be cool—if it ever was—but it's not going away.

Share prices of Apple (yellow), Google (red), and Microsoft (blue) from 2013 to present (Google)

Alexis C. Madrigal

The New York Observer has called Madrigal "for all intents and purposes, the perfect modern reporter." He co-founded Longshot magazine, a high-speed media experiment that garnered attention from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. While at Wired.com, he built Wired Science into one of the most popular blogs in the world. The site was nominated for best magazine blog by the MPA and best science website in the 2009 Webby Awards. He also co-founded Haiti ReWired, a groundbreaking community dedicated to the discussion of technology, infrastructure, and the future of Haiti.

He's spoken at Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, SXSW, E3, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and his writing was anthologized in Best Technology Writing 2010 (Yale University Press).

Madrigal is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Office for the History of Science and Technology. Born in Mexico City, he grew up in the exurbs north of Portland, Oregon, and now lives in Oakland.