A Short History of Microsoft It was started by two childhood friends who were wild about computer Microsoft Corp. is an American technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that supports the invention, manufacturing, and licensing of goods and services related to computing. It was registered in New Mexico in 1976 after being formed the year before by two childhood friends. Two Computer Geeks Before Paul Allen and Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft, they were avid computer geeks in an age when access to computers was hard to come by. Allen and Gates skipped high school classes to live and breathe in their school's computer room. Eventually, they hacked the school's computer and were caught, but instead of being expelled, they were offered unlimited computer time in exchange for helping to improve the school computer's performance. Gates and Allen ran their own small company, called Traf-O-Data, while in high school and sol