SharePoint

SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and its usage varies substantially among organizations.
According to Microsoft, SharePoint had 200 million users.
History
Origins
SharePoint evolved from projects codenamed "Office Server" and "Tahoe" during the Office XP development cycle.
"Office Server" evolved out of the FrontPage and Office Server Extensions and "Team Pages". It targeted simple, bottom-up collaboration.
"Tahoe", built on shared technology with Exchange and the "Digital Dashboard", targeted top-down portals, search and document management. The searching and indexing capabilities of SharePoint came from the "Tahoe" feature set. The search and indexing features were a combination of the index and crawling features from the Microsoft Site Server family of products and from the query language of Microsoft Index Server.
GAC-(Global Assembly Cache) is used to accommodate the shared assemblies that are specifically designated to be shared by applications executed on a system.
Versions
Successive versions (in chronological order):
Office Server Extensions
SharePoint Portal Server 2001
SharePoint Team Services
Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (free license)
SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (free license)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
SharePoint Foundation 2010 (free), SharePoint Server 2010 (commercial extension for Foundation), and SharePoint Enterprise 2010 (commercial extension for Server)
SharePoint Foundation 2013 (free), SharePoint Server 2013 (extension on top of Foundation), and SharePoint Enterprise 2013.
SharePoint Online (Plan 1 & 2).
SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint Enterprise 2016.
SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint Enterprise 2019.
Notable changes in SharePoint 2010
Changes in end-user functionality added in the 2010 version of SharePoint include:
New UI with Fluent Ribbon, using wiki-pages rather than 'web-part pages' and offering multi-browser support.
New social profiles, and early social networking features
Central Administration rebuilt.
Restructure of "Shared Service Providers" - Introduction of "Service Applications" SOA model.
Sandboxed Solutions and a client-side object-model APIs for JavaScript, Silverlight, and .NET applications
Business Connectivity Services, Claims-based Authentication, and Windows PowerShell support
Notable changes in SharePoint 2013
Cross-browser drag & drop support for file uploads/changes, and Follow/Share buttons
OneDrive for Business (initially SkyDrive Pro) replaces MySites and Workspaces.
Updates to social network feature & new task aggregation tool.
Database caching, called Distributed Cache Service
Content-aware switching, called Management
Audit center (service called eDiscovery)
Rebuilt and improved search capabilities
Removal of some analytics capabilities
UI: JSLink, MDS, theme packs. No WYSIWYG in SP Designer.
Notable changes in SharePoint 2016
Sources:
Hybrid Improvements
Single Sites View
Unified Search
Search Sensitive Information in Hybrid Search
Unified UI (O365)
Performance, Scaling & Deployment Improvements
Search Scaling Capabilities
Site Collection Enhancement
Deterministic View Threshold - Removing 5000 Limit
Durable Links and Large Files Support
Deployment Improvements
MinRole
Zero Downtime Patching
Notable changes in SharePoint 2019
Sources:
Modern sites and page layouts
Communication sites
Large File Support, Character Restrictions, and File/Folder Names
Notable changes in SharePoint Subscription Edition (SE)
Sources:
Authentication and Identity Management
Support for OpenID Connect (OIDC) 1.0
Enhanced People Picker for modern authentication
Improved Integrated Windows authentication over TLS
Deployment and Upgrade
Support for Windows Server 2022
Support for Windows Server Core
Support for "N - 2" upgrade from SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019 (and Project Server 2016 and 2019)
AppFabric Cache integration
Farm Administration
Support for host header bindings on Central Administration web application
Support for Server Name Indication (SNI) for host header bindings
Support for changing web application bindings
Easier AAM configuration for Central Administration
Federated service applications support "N - 2" consuming farms (SharePoint 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition)
Support for client certificate authentication to SMTP servers
Health and Monitoring (new Health Analyzer rules)
Certificate notification contacts haven't been configured
Upcoming SSL certificate expirations
SSL certificates are about to expire
SSL certificates have expired
Hybrid
Better integration with Power Apps and Power Automate
Improved hybrid search troubleshooting
Search
Search result page modernization
Support for returning list content in the modern results page
Thumbnails in the modern search result page
Security
SSL certificate management
Support for TLS 1.3
Strong TLS encryption by default
Improved ASP.NET view state security and key management
Sites, Lists, and Libraries
Accessibility improvements
Brick layout for document library thumbnails and image gallery web part
Bulk check-in and check-out
Bulk file download from document libraries and OneDrive personal sites
Image and document thumbnails in document libraries and picture libraries
Modern list and library web parts support adding, editing, and deleting content
Modern document sets
Storage
New BLOB storage provider: Remote Share Provider
Remote Share Provider diagnostic tool
References
Other websites
SharePoint
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Windows software