FACTBOX-Facts about Microsoft Corp

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) offered to buy Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the popular Web portal, for $44.6 billion (23 billion pounds) in cash and stock, seeking to join forces against Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in what would be the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger.

Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's previous closing stock price.

The following are some key facts about Microsoft:

* 1968: Eighth-grader William "Bill" Gates first introduced to computers and programming languages.

* Gates and schoolmate, Paul Allen, were inspired by an article in Popular Electronics magazine about the first personal computer, the Altair 8800, to develop a version of the Basic programming language for the PC.

* 1973: Gates goes to Harvard University, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer.

* 1975: 19-year-old Gates drops out of Harvard and co-founds Microsoft with Allen.

* 1980: International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) chooses Microsoft to write the operating system for the IBM personal computer, introduced in 1981.

* 1985: Microsoft launches Windows 1.0, the first version of the popular operating system.