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Microsoft's Market Value Tops $500 Billion Again After 17 Years (reuters.com)
Microsoft's market capitalization topped $500 billion for the first time since 2000 on Friday, after the technology giant's stock rose following another quarter of results that beat Wall Street's expectations. From a report: Shares of the world's biggest software company rose as much as 2.1 percent to $65.64, an all-time high, in early trading, valuing the company at $510.37 billion. The last time Microsoft was valued more was in March 2000, during the heyday of the dotcom era, when it had a market value of a little above $550 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. Despite the gains, Microsoft still lags Apple's market capitalization of about $642 billion and Google-parent Alphabet's market value of a little more than $570 billion. Microsoft reported second-quarter results on Thursday that beat analysts' average estimate for both revenue and profit, mainly due to its fast-growing cloud computing business. The company's profit and revenue have now topped Wall Street's expectations in seven of the last eight quarters.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator (that's based on the consumer price index):
$500B USD in 2016 ~= $359B USD in 2000
$550B USD in 2000 ~= $766B USD in 2016
So, basically, they're at about 72% of the value they were at in the early 2000s. To be fair, they were a behemoth at the time, so that's still quite a feat, but it does go to show how far they've fallen.