Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date.
Pitney Bowes Inc. is an American provider of global eCommerce solutions, shipping and mailing products, location intelligence, customer engagement and customer information management solutions. Based in Stamford, Connecticut, the company has approximately 16,100 employees worldwide. It is one of 87 existing firms that have been members of the S&P 500 since its creation in 1957. Other major U.S. centers of operation include Danbury, Connecticut; Shelton, Connecticut; Troy, New York; and Lanham, Maryland.