PowerPoint file

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by a software company called Forethought, Inc.

It was released in 1987, initially only for Macintosh computers. Microsoft acquired PowerPoint for about 14 million dollars three months after its appearance. This was Microsoft's first significant acquisition, and Microsoft created a new business unit for PowerPoint in Silicon Valley where Forethought was located.

PowerPoint became a component of the Microsoft Office suite, first offered in 1989 for Macintosh and in 1990 for Windows, which included several Microsoft applications. Starting with PowerPoint 4.0 (1994), PowerPoint was integrated into the development of Microsoft Office, and adopted common shared components and a common user interface.

PowerPoint's market share was very small at first, before a version for Microsoft Windows was introduced, but grew rapidly with the growth of Windows and Office. By the late 1990s, PowerPoint's worldwide market share in presentation software was estimated at 95%.

PowerPoint was originally designed to provide images for group presentations within corporate organisations, but has come to be widely used in many other communication situations, both in business and elsewhere. The impact of this much wider use of PowerPoint has been experienced as a powerful change throughout society.