Microsoft has been around for 4 decades now, but since their debut in the 1980s, the company has changed quite a lot. Even if their most famous products like Windows, which is still the most used operating system on consumer PCs today, and Microsoft Office, are still widely used, product distribution and monetization have changed quite a lot.

The business model has changed, from software products to services, turning former competitors to partners. Partnership is really what best describes today's Microsoft: with institutions as well as other companies. This strategy has been in place since the early years, for example, the partnership with Apple in the late 1980s.

Target customers also changed, after the failure of Windows Phone platform, Microsoft started to shift away from large consumer products, to focus on services to companies. There is maybe one exception: Microsoft Flight Simulator, which was released in 1981 and is still active today.

Another change has been the approach to innovation. Instead of investing internally, they have been acquiring other successful companies: Skype, LinkedIn, GitHub, Mojang, to name a few. Another successful strategy has been offering the same services as other companies, like Microsoft Azure Cloud services.

Thanks to its large and diversified portfolio of products and services, Microsoft has been able to adapt to the new tech landscape successfully, unlike other big companies like Kodak for example, which collapsed after consumers stopped buying their products.