Mary Jo Foley looks back on a momentous 16 years of covering Microsoft for ZDNET

When Mary Jo Foley started writing for ZDNET in 2006, Bill Gates was still the CEO, Windows and Office software were the nexus of the company, and Microsoft was the fourth largest business in the world by market cap – chasing giants like Exxon, General Electric and Walmart. 

Today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella runs a much different company that has cloud services as the heart of the enterprise. Microsoft is now the third largest company in the world by market cap, but tech companies now dominate five of the top six spots – with Apple, Google, Amazon and Tesla in the mix.

Microsoft made $44 billion dollars in revenue in 2006. That will more than quadruple to over $198 billion in 2022. 

Reporting on all of Microsoft’s product changes, business changes, executive changes, and company culture changes during these years, Foley has arguably been the most reliable, the most consistent, and the most valuable source of information on Microsoft in the world.

It’s been an amazing run. Of course, all good things come to an end and Mary Jo’s time at ZDNET is wrapping up as she heads to the advisor service Directions on Microsoft in November to become their Editor in Chief.

ZDNET is very grateful to have been the platform for Mary Jo’s outstanding reporting for the past decade and a half and we’re thrilled for her in her exciting new role at Directions on Microsoft. Of course, we’ll continue to follow her reporting, just like many of you!

To put a final exclamation point on all of her great work at ZDNET, I interviewed Mary Jo to talk about the amazing timeline of events that she has covered in the transformation of Microsoft and the tech industry during the past 16 years. If you’re a Mary Jo Foley fan, you don’t want to miss this!