Microsoft has been changing

If you're still thinking of Microsoft as mainly a producer of the Internet Explorer browser and software for your personal computer, you need to catch up. Microsoft has been reinventing itself, focusing on the cloud and the corporate market, and the results have been substantial. The company's recently reported fourthquarter results exceeded analysts' expectations, with total revenue growing by 17 percent year over year to $30 billion. That's pretty good for a company with a market value recently topping $800 billion! Revenue from Microsoft's commercial cloud computing businesses surged by 53 percent to nearly $7 billion, representing about a quarter of the company's total revenue. The “more personal computing” division saw revenue grow by 17 percent, while LinkedIn, which Microsoft acquired in 2016, posted revenue growth of 37 percent. Microsoft has been good to its shareholders, too, returning $5.3 billion to them via dividends and share buybacks during the fourth quarter. Its dividend recently yielded 1.65 percent, and it has been regularly increasing its payout by an average of about 13 percent per year. You can find higher dividend yields elsewhere, but not all companies offer Microsoft's stability and long-term growth potential. (Teresa Kersten, a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors, is an employee of LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft.)