Microsoft Case Research Articles

The Impact of Digital Transformation on Company Valuation: A Case of Microsoft

The digital economy is now the driving force behind global economic expansion. In 2014, Microsoft underwent a digital transformation, and its valuation soared. This essay aims to investigate how the digital revolution affects business valuation. This paper applies research in asset valuation, investment and financing strategies, and risk management to qualitatively analyze Microsoft through the SWOT analysis method. Advanced technology and corporate innovation can raise valuation expectations, while technological risks and business homogenization can impact market competition and lower company valuation. Microsoft's advancement in digitalization can not only improve the company's competitiveness, but also enhance its value and promote high-quality development. As a result, firms need to effectively manage technology risks and data security issues, control costs, or improve service quality to remain competitive in the marketplace and increase the firm's valuation, thereby maintaining its market position and overall value. In this and other contexts, factors affecting valuation are subsequently discussed.

Bridging business and human rights and business for peace: A case study of Microsoft’s multitrack diplomacy

Through the practice of corporate diplomacy—a subset of track-two diplomacy—multinational enterprises (MNEs) can help address issues of polycentric governance, including those in the realms of business and human rights (BHR) and business for peace (B4P). Despite growing interest in both fields of academia and practice, there remains scope for further empirical work at their intersection. This article, therefore, contributes to the extant literature on BHR and B4P by empirically exploring the case of Microsoft, an American MNE, and its corporate diplomacy activities on digital peace in cyberspace. Specifically, the case focuses on three purposefully selected initiatives: (1) the company’s corporate diplomacy efforts on the Digital Geneva Convention, (2) the Digital Peace Now campaign, and (3) its proactive engagement in response to the war in Ukraine. These initiatives highlight how responsibility, leadership, employee empowerment, and partnerships have contributed to Microsoft’s corporate culture and decision-making processes to create an environment that prioritizes digital peace and integrates both BHR and B4P perspectives. In doing so, this article argues for the importance of addressing B4P activities in tandem with BHR in a complementary manner within practitioner initiatives.

The Economic Impact of Monopolistic Advantage: A Case Study of Microsoft

As one of the largest company in the world, Microsoft is regarded as a monopolist because of its dominant position in operating system and software industry form 1990s till now, and this kind of monopoly is going to be sustained in the future. Under a such background above, it is important for customers to know what impacts do monopolist have on them. Is it benefit or doing more harm to customers when compared to competitive corporations. In this paper, we use Microsoft case analysis to discuss questions like product quality and customers’ economic burden of monopoly. Also, specific data such as customer satisfaction, income and expenditure are used to help solve the problems. We find that what really matters about the quality depends on the attitude and thoughts of customers who purchased and experienced the products since Microsoft’s main products had been recognized by public according to their significant market share. However, monopolist does has negative impact on customers in some way. After analysis, we offer some suggestions on how Microsoft or other monopoly companies can improve their customer satisfaction and what measurement can be used to change the present situation.

Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision Blizzard: A Case Study

On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intention to initiate the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. It will pay for about $69 billion in an all-cash deal and the price will place a 45% premium on Activision Blizzard's value. Based on industry prospect analysis, competitor analysis, and SWOT analysis, this paper studies the case of Microsoft acquiring Activision to analyze the potential benefits and risks of this typical acquisition behavior. This paper finds out that the two company has a positive outlook since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed cloud service and the gaming market. The industry analysis as well as the SWOT analysis of both companies also indicate that they have the opportunity to develop mutually and complement each other's weaknesses. This paper may help to understand the business purpose, risks, and benefits of the acquisition from the perspective of future cloud services market development. On the basis of the key findings, this paper believes that the acquisition will contribute more positive effects to both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

MONOPOLI DI BIDANG TEKNOLOGI INFORMASI

Competition in the business world causes business actors to sometimes resort to various ways to conduct unfair business competition, resulting in losses for other business actors. In the virtual world (information technology for example) this action is often found. So it is necessary to study how the prohibition of monopolistic practices and unfair business competition against businesses in the field of information technology. This research is a normative legal research, the main data of which is obtained through library research. Based on the results of the research, it is known that the form of market monopoly and unfair business competition in information technology law can be in the form of vertical integration, discrimination of business actors, taking of domain names, and other actions that can harm business competitors. The Tying Arrangement in the Microsoft case is a form of unfair business competition, in which the giant software company Microsoft is accused of violating the antitrust law by taking Tying Arrangements by linking the windows product (the tying product) with the internet explorer browser product (the tied product). The Tying Arrangement was allegedly carried out in order to win a monopoly in the internet browser product market.

Lessons learned from offline assessment of security-critical systems: the case of microsoft’s active directory

Lessons learned from offline assessment of security-critical systems: the case of microsoft’s active directory

Danish Supreme Court Rules against the Taxpayer in Its Third Transfer Pricing Case

On 26 April 2021, the Danish Supreme Court rendered its third judgment in a transfer pricing (TP) case. As opposed to the first two TP judgments from the Danish Supreme Court (the Microsoft case and the Adecco case), the tax authorities prevailed in this third case against the privately held company Tetra Pak.

Active Choice vs. Inertia? An Exploratory Analysis of Choice Screens Applied in the European Microsoft Antitrust Case

In March 2010, Microsoft started displaying a choice screen to its users whose default web browser was Internet Explorer (IE). This screen included the 12 most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows and was imposed as a consequence of an antitrust investigation in which the European competition authorities accused Microsoft of extending its monopoly from the operative system market to the web browsers market by including IE as Windows’ default web browser. After March 2010, when the choice screen started operating, IE’s market share did go down. It seems straightforward to attribute IE’s decline in Europe to the choice screen itself. However, considering publicly available data from StatCounter, a common trend among developed countries is quite noticeable. IE’s market share was going down before Microsoft started displaying the choice screen in Europe. In fact, IE’s decline, which continues in the following years, is also evident in the U.S., Australia, Canada, among many other countries that did not display choice screens. A differences-in-differences analysis shows that when considering these other jurisdictions as a comparison group to assess the choice screen’s effect on IE’s market share drop, the impact of the intervention is negligible. When the U.S. serves as the control group, the choice-screen leads to a change in IE’s between -1.76% and 0.08%, depending on the time frame considered as pre-post. And only the difference of -1.76% with a 6-month time frame is statistically significant. However, when considering the average of the U.S., Canada, and Australia as the control group, the choice screen’s impact is between -0.16% and -0.69% and not statistically significant. This preliminary finding invites us to assess how sticky default applications can be. Consumers have become more sophisticated 25 years after the first U.S. Microsoft case. Thus the theory of harm and the remedies that may address consumers’ inertia should be re-examined. In particular, what types of consumers may stick to default applications, whether the choice-screen design has been ineffective, as well as the reach of choice screens.

A Retrospective on U.S. v. Microsoft: Why Does It Resonate Today?

The U.S. v. Microsoft case was filed in 1998, the District Court filed its opinion in 2000, and the D.C. Circuit’s opinion came down in 2001. This article explains why the case continues to stand as an important Sherman Act, Section 2 monopolization case. Moreover, if restated and reviewed as a two-sided market case in light of Ohio v. Am. Express Co., the outline would be unchanged.

Are foreign copyright works protected in Nigeria?

Despite Nigeria's treaty obligations, Nigerian courts have, in the last quarter of a century, consistently but erroneously held that the Nigerian copyright statute does not protect copyright works of foreign persons. The purport of the decisions is that foreign persons cannot sue to protect their copyright in Nigeria. Given that the decisions of three trial courts and a Court of Appeal decision were never appealed to the Supreme Court, they arguably remain good precedent. The decisions suggest that foreign direct investors who need copyright protection are exposed in Nigeria. Relying on two of these cases, a leading intellectual property law text echoed this erroneous position. This article demonstrates that the decisions were reached in ignorance of applicable statute. As such, the decisions should not be followed by trial courts irrespective of the rule of binding judicial precedent. The article outlines various mechanisms within the copyright statute that extend the protection of the Nigerian copyright statute to foreign works. This article goes further than previous works. Unlike earlier works, this article suggests the path trial courts should tread, despite the rule of precedent, in distinguishing this line of cases to hold that foreign corporations incorporated in many treaty countries and foreign works emanating from many treaty countries are protected in Nigeria. Unlike earlier works, this article demonstrates that lower courts may refer this issue to higher courts for interpretation and guidance under the case stated procedure. Whilst other works made passing references to the Copyright (Reciprocal Extension) Order 1972 (the 1972 Order), that arguably extends copyright to foreign works under the Copyright Act 1970, none cited judicial authority that held that the 1972 Order made under the repealed Copyright Act 1970 is still valid under the current Copyright Act. None referred to the Interpretation Act that supports this judicial authority. Unlike previous work, this article reveals that if the Microsoft case that is the most significant of these cases is appealed to the Nigerian Supreme Court, the court will extend the time within which the Microsoft Corporation can appeal and reverse Microsoft and the line of cases identified in this article.

Measuring Successful Leadership via A Seven Factor Model on Net Profit – A Case of Microsoft in it Industry in the us

Measuring Successful Leadership via A Seven Factor Model on Net Profit – A Case of Microsoft in it Industry in the us

Dynamics of marketing automation adoption for organisational marketing process transformation: the case of Microsoft

As markets and customers rapidly digitalise with technological advances, companies are responding by increasingly introducing marketing automation (MA). This study aims to support successful MA adoption and marketing transformation. To achieve this aim, we design an MA adoption model based on Kotter's eight-step model, and we study the dynamics of the MA adoption process by analysing Microsoft's MA adoption case. Based on the results of the analysis, we present an MA adoption model in eight stages. The MA adoption model proposes a step-by-step transformation in adopting MA and suggests that to ensure successful completion, MA should be adopted in conjunction with marketing transformation rather than remaining on the level of technology adoption. The MA adoption model presented in this study is expected to help managers understand the dynamics of MA adoption and, thus, help them to build an appropriate MA adoption strategy.

Dynamics of marketing automation adoption for organisational marketing process transformation: the case of Microsoft

Dynamics of marketing automation adoption for organisational marketing process transformation: the case of Microsoft

A Study on the Extraterritorial Application of the General Data Protection Regulation with a Focus on Computing

A Study on the Extraterritorial Application of the General Data Protection Regulation with a Focus on Computing

Data Without Borders: Resolving Extraterritorial Data Disputes

This paper focuses on the recent surge of cross-border data disputes, particularly between the United States and the European Union. It first explains the elaborate privacy and data processing regimes of each region, highlighting key similarities and differences. It then focuses on recent high-profile cases in both commercial and criminal contexts including: Digital Rights Ireland, Maximillian Schrems v. Data Processing Commissioner, and Microsoft Corporation v. United States. The paper focuses on the novel problems that courts now face in reconceptualizing digital extraterritoriality. With a heavier focus on the Second Circuit's recent decision in the Microsoft case, the paper discusses the shortcomings with the Second Circuit's analysis. It then proposes that courts adopt what Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer recently coined active cross-referencing to compare U.S. case law and EU case law when dealing with cross-border data processing and privacy disputes in order to better understand what extraterritoriality should mean in a borderless digital world.

Identifying the effect of mobile operating systems on the mobile services market

Modern economic theory predicts that tying can serve as a tool for leveraging market power. In line with this economic theory, competition authorities regulate the tying of Microsoft Windows with its Media Player or Internet browser in the EU and Japan. The authorities also take note of the market power of mobile handset operating systems (OSs) over competition in the app and services markets. However, no empirical evidence has thus far been presented on the success of government intervention in the Microsoft case. To assess the effectiveness of government intervention on mobile handset OSs, we identify the extent to which complementarity and consumer preferences affect the correlation between mobile handset OSs and mobile service app markets (mail, search, and map). We find significant positive complementarity between the mail, search, and map services, and mobile handset OSs. However, the elasticities of the mobile handset OS–mobile service are rather small. We conclude that taking action to restrict mobile handset OSs is less effective than acting on mobile services market directly.

What cloud interoperability connotates for EU policy making: Recurrence of old problems or new ones looming on the horizon?

One of the key factors for a thriving cloud computing market is the ‘interoperability’ between the relevant hardware and software that govern the cloud services. While a complete interoperability means different cloud users being able to exchange the management tools, server images and other software, this is infrequently realised because users are locked into (proprietary) cloud ecosystems. This (problem of vendor lock-in) is potentially accompanied with another problem revolving around the content delivery networks being integrated with the distinct clouds along with possible harms to media pluralism as well as interoperability. In view of these concerns, this study focuses on competition law, standardisation and regulatory policies, and elaborates on to what extent cloud interoperability needs to be secured under EU legal fora. Overall, it is found that vendor lock-in might be attended by ‘coupling’ and complex ‘layering’ strategies, whereas efficiency and/or security based justifications would arise as the counter-balancing reasons. Based on the findings, the study concludes that while focusing on the vertical (i.e., vendor lock-in) concerns, a comprehensive viewpoint needs to be upheld, allowing efficiencies (i.e., proprietary enhancements) based on the architectural design and innovations, obviating narrowly-fashioned (i.e., foreclosure-based) interventions such as in Microsoft case. It is also underlined that cloud interoperability has a content dimension that would require a broader perspective, extending to horizontal concerns and requirements within the context of EU policy making strategies.

International Law and Extraterritoriality: Brief of International and Extraterritorial Law Scholars as Amici Curiae (U.S. v. Microsoft)

Written by international and extraterritorial law scholars, the attached amicus brief was submitted in the U.S. v. Microsoft case. That case involves whether Congress, when it enacted the Stored Communications Act, intended to provide federal and local law enforcement authority to unilaterally seize the private email communications of foreign citizens stored abroad. The amicus brief explains how the Charming Betsy canon and the law of extraterritoriality are part of a well-defined body of law the U.S. Supreme Court has developed for determining how American law applies abroad. These doctrines exist independently: one aims to avoid unsanctioned violations of international law. The other prevents the improper projection of American legal power beyond our borders. But they share much in common. Both rest on a properly restrained understanding of the judiciary’s place in our constitutional order, under which the often-delicate issues of foreign affairs in lawmaking are properly reserved to Congress, not courts. And both are grounded on shared insights the Court has gained over time about Congress’s approach to lawmaking: Its preference for “domestic, not foreign matters;" its respect for other nations’ sovereignty; its regard for international law; its inclination toward international collaboration; and perhaps most importantly of all, its avoidance of international friction and strife — unless some overriding policy need compels congressional action despite the risk of such strife. The brief explains why the Court should preserve the assumptions about extraterritoriality that the legislative and judicial branches have shared since the Republic’s early days. These shared assumptions properly constrain law enforcement and other governmental actors. They also prevent the march of technological progress from introducing an extraterritorial creep into laws that Congress intended to remain domestically fixed. And they push the Executive to engage with Congress to address cross-border challenges, including transnational crime. It explains why the electronic seizure of electronic records physically located in another country is an exercise of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction in violation of international law, and why the Court's extraterritoriality jurisprudence prohibits assuming, when no indication exists in the statute, that Congress authorized borderless law enforcement.

Amicus Brief, in the Supreme Court of the United States United States of America vs Microsoft Corporation

Amicus Brief from European Scholars, Microsoft Case, US Supreme Court. Cloud computing, data storage in the EU, GDPR, extra-territoriality.

An Attitude Towards an Artificial Soul? Responses to the “Nazi Chatbot”

AbstractThe article discusses the case of Microsoft's Twitter chatbot Tay that “turned into a Nazi” after less than 24 hours from its release on the Internet. The first section presents a brief recapitulation of Alan Turing's proposal for a test for artificial intelligence and the way it influenced subsequent discussions in the philosophy of mind. In the second section, I offer a few arguments appealing for caution regarding the identification of an accomplished chatbot as a thinking being. These are motivated principally by Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussions of mind and soul and by some Wittgensteinian philosophers' criticisms of AI endeavours. I will try to show that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of AIs such as chatbots as thinking beings, rather independently of their technical perfection and accomplishment. In the third section, the case of the “Nazi chatbot” Tay will offer me material for some light to be shed on the peculiar (primitive) character of our interconnected concepts of thinking, soul and person and on the importance of their further ramified connections.