---
title: "Which came first, Java or Microsoft?"
description: "Java vs Microsoft: Microsoft came first, by 20 years — 1975 against 1995. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-microsoft/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Java or Microsoft?

**Which came first, Java or Microsoft?: Microsoft**

1975 — 20 years before Java

Microsoft came first, by 20 years. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

## Side by side

|  | Java | Microsoft |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1995 | 1975 |
| Date | 1995-05-23 | 1975-04-04 |
| Category | technology | company |
| What happened | Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. | Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque. |

## Java

Java was announced in May 1995, having started in 1991 as a project called Oak aimed at interactive television — a market that did not exist yet. Its promise was "write once, run anywhere", achieved by compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine rather than to a specific processor. JavaScript arrived seven months later and was named after it purely as a marketing decision; the two languages are unrelated.

## Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Java or Microsoft?

Microsoft, by 20 years — 1975 against 1995.

### When did Java start?

1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

### When did Microsoft start?

1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]