
List of Fictional Microsoft Companies - tapoxi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_Microsoft_companies
======
nrook
My favorite stupid Google April Fools joke was when they put out a "customer"
blog post bragging that Contoso had switched to Google Apps.

[https://cloud.googleblog.com/2011/04/contoso-has-gone-
google...](https://cloud.googleblog.com/2011/04/contoso-has-gone-google.html)

~~~
romwell
>Since moving to Gmail, HR violations and after-hours sharing of Rebecca Black
videos have gone down by 76 percent

>2011

Wait, Rebecca Black was _that_ long ago? Feels like yesterday.

~~~
philjohn
You should listen to some of the stuff she's done recently ... it's not bad
(compared to other recent pop music).

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phs318u
Twenty years ago I contributed a chapter to a book on SQL Server and slipped
in a subtle fart joke. Instead of using the then Microsoft standard sample
company called “Northwind”, my example had “Southwind”.

EDITED to add link to Google Books link.

[https://books.google.com/books/about/Microsoft_SQL_Server_7_...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Microsoft_SQL_Server_7_0_Programming_Unl.html?id=SZskAQAAIAAJ)

~~~
degenerate
Reminds me of this clothing brand that got lawyered into the ground by The
North Face:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt)

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jagged-chisel
I do find this mildly interesting and can see how it's interesting enough to
make the HN front page.

But how is this 'culturally relevant' enough to make a Wikipedia page? That's
an "I'm amused" question rather than an "I'm flabbergasted" question.

~~~
ramenmeal
Seems like you answered your own question.

~~~
jagged-chisel
Can you explain? Just because the HN crowd finds something interesting, that
doesn't automatically qualify it for a wikipedia page.

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TaylorGood
Let's not forget Steve Ballmer as head of Virtucon Industries, with Bill Gates
as an honorary Austin Powers.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI_xuFA18m4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI_xuFA18m4)

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mcv
This is a fantastic resource of fictional companies for any modern day or
near-future RPG campaign. I'm currently running Shadowrun, and can always use
new corporations.

~~~
q5jwB6bD
Shadowrun (videogames) is also trademarked by Microsoft. Does adding one of
their fictional companies make it some twisted form of recursion? :)

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mikece
I could have sworn there was a "Nile Bookstore" back in the early days of .NET
(2002 - 2004).

~~~
romwell
What if I told you there was a major online bookstore circa 2002 that was also
named after a humongous river[1]?

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River)

~~~
mikece
That was the joke -- that and they are in the same city and some of the
engineers at MSFT have beers with the AMZN engineers.

~~~
romwell
Of course! I totally got the joke right away! Might I say, I'm totally _in_
the Nile!

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pedrow
Does anyone know the origin of the name "Contoso"? I bet Raymond Chen does!

~~~
mrec
[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jhoward/2005/01/27/conto...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jhoward/2005/01/27/contoso-
com-why-who-chose-it-is-it-an-anagram-is-there-a-hidden-meaning/#comment-1205)

 _" at the event we needed 2 companies, so someone in the product team came up
with Contoso and Fabrikham, and in the BizApps events, all the integration
scenarios where around these 2 companies doing business with each other. i
have no idea where the names come from – i guess its like with setting up your
own off-the-shelf Limited company, someone comes up with mixes of word &
names. Fabrikham is a horrible name! Contoso is better, bu only just"_

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watersb
Duwamish Books

Also there was a pet-supplies store in there somewhere. Back when MSDN
published as newsletter as a sort of newspaper-sized thing.

The Duwamish companies were used in extended examples of client-server
business automation with Microsoft Office and their server products
combination of SQL Server, IIS, Active Directory, Message Queues; packaged as
"Microsoft BackOffice" (egads).

~~~
lwf
Egads? It's a standard term,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_office](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_office)

~~~
watersb
I had a similar reaction when in a business meeting and one of the company
reps said he was "Opening the Kimono".

A term of art in the business world today; I moved to scientific research
computing in 2000 and had not gotten the memo about open kimonos.

Egads.

~~~
ansible
I had a former boss (a couple decades ago) that was also fond of the "open the
kimono" saying. Ugh. WTF is wrong with saying "full openness" or "full
disclosure" or something else that sounds appropriately business-like.

~~~
thaumasiotes
"Baring it all" would be a native idiom preserving even the emphatic nudity
reference while not suggesting that you're taking off some other woman's
clothes.

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BitwiseFool
One of the things I adore about Wikipedia is the fact that someone made this
list, and then other people decided to contribute to it.

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vxNsr
Only two I've ever run into are contoso and fabrikam

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2bitencryption
I hear Fabrikam sells some wonderful shirts.[0]

[0] [https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-
us/commerce/overview/](https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-
us/commerce/overview/)

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badrabbit
If you search for these example domains in the network traffic logs of any
largr company you'll see at least a few hits. This is a security issue because
people use example code, copy pasted into prod code which mostly does nothing
due to the domains not resolving or not hosting the appropriate content but if
an attacker took over these domains they will expose a ton of companies to an
attack.

I believe example.com or example.org exist specifically for this purpose. I
hope those of you who write documentation keep this in mind,especially when
your example domain has never beeb registered.

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RyJones
There is someone driving around Redmond with a CONTOSO license plate. I've
seen it several times - too bad FABRIKAM is too long for Washington state
plates.

~~~
EvanAnderson
[https://twitter.com/schumatt/status/1159634050602033152](https://twitter.com/schumatt/status/1159634050602033152)

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EvanAnderson
Something similiar: Much of the late 90's and early 2000's Microsoft Official
Curriculum training courses used the names of real Microsoft employees in
examples (along with these fictional company names). I wish I could recall
some of the names right now. I remember searching for some of the names and
being shocked and amused to discover they were real Microsoft employees.

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frankosaurus
I was surprised not to see Spencer Ceramics listed. They were featured
prominently in MS Word for DOS manuals.

~~~
samdixon
Add it! That’s the beauty of Wikipedia.

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astrobe_
"A Datum Corporation" reminded me of Traf-O-data [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traf-O-
Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traf-O-Data)

~~~
romwell
"A Datum Corporation" may be a nod to ADAT[1].

Someone in Microsoft makes music.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAT)

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kuharich
In company collateral we used to say, "Send an email to anyone@microsoft.com"
I think that it's a real email address and is still active! LOL

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kerng
Probably worth noting that some of them are not fictional companies, and
Microsoft indeed registered them as legal entities!

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_bxg1
Whenever I need to mock-up data about a list of people I use the family from
Bob's Burgers

~~~
jimmcslim
On a more serious note, you might want to consider using faker.js [1],
alternatively bogus [2] if you are on the .NET stack.

[1] [https://github.com/marak/Faker.js/](https://github.com/marak/Faker.js/)

[2] [https://github.com/bchavez/Bogus](https://github.com/bchavez/Bogus)

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astrobe_
"A s

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yarrel
The best one is the kind, progressive, open Microsoft.

