Earlier this year, (NASDAQ: MSFT) dethroned Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to become the world's most valuable company. With a market capitalization of roughly $3 trillion, Microsoft is currently worth about $400 billion more than the iPhone manufacturer and stands atop the illustrious list of "Magnificent Seven" stocks.

Following Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) lead, Microsoft began building its own cloud infrastructure business in 2008. In 2010, the company launched its Azure cloud platform. But Azure wasn't really in a state that would allow it to be a credible competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS) until 2013.

Source: Statista.

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Source Fool.com