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Title: The Microsoft File : The Secret Case against Bill Gates by Wendy Goldman Rohm ISBN: 0-8129-2716-8 Publisher: Crown Business Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.66 (61 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Revealing, exhaustively researched, a great read!
Comment: This book purports to tell the reader how the world's leading software company REALLY became so big and dominant, and indeed we find that the reality is rather different from the PR myth. And yes, based largely on unnamed sources as it is, I find this book far more believable than any official Microsoft version of events, or any MS denouncement of the author's reporting for that matter. (Hey, think about it: no publisher would put out a book with THIS many serious charges against "the richest man in the world" and his company, if they weren't confident of the author's work!) Clearly exhaustively researched, the book provides detailed and engaging accounts of numerous business deals in which MS was a factor or an active player. So, we get to see just how underhanded MS and its top executives could be at times, often stabbing supposed business partners (Go and IBM, among others) squarely in the back. There are tons of fascinating relevations and new perspectives on a variety of events: the Apple stock purchase; the 'AARD' code in Windows 3.1; the FTC and Justice Department antitrust activities with regard to MS (or lack thereof); shifting a major computer manufacturer (Germany's Vobis) from DR-DOS to MS-DOS...the list goes on. The key to the book's success at accomplishing its stated purpose is the abundance of MS memos, email, and other documentation somehow dug up by Rohm, that tell "the real story" behind so much of what MS has done and is doing. In particular, we see Gates and other top executives making it clear that their goal is to dominate every market and freeze out all competition, NOT to "innovate" and make the best products as they like to claim publicly. I doubt "make Gates look like trash" was a goal for the author, but the picture of Gates that emerges sure isn't a pretty one. He's revealed as ruthless and ridiculously paranoid about anyone else who might actually market a competing product. Is the mighty MS afraid that others could very well make better products? Maybe that's the real reason they are so obsessed with stamping out competition, and continue their efforts to lock everyone into an all-Microsoft, all-the-time, world. There's plenty more interesting stuff where this came from...if the bits I mentioned sound the least bit intriguing, grab a copy of the book, I bet you won't regret it.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent piece of journalism into how Microsoft works.
Comment: This is the first book I've read in a single day in some time. Wendy Goldman Rohm has created a rare piece of true journalism in a time when the art seems to have lost it's form. She has done her homework and explained to the reader how Microsoft has achieved its place in the computer software world.
I have had first hand experience with Microsoft as a senior manager in Information Services in Washington State government and am very familiar with their methods. It is refreshing to see a clearly written account of their business practices that are based on facts and not emotion.
While the author is clear about the significant contributions the Microsoft team has made to computer software, changing the way the world uses it, she is equally clear in separating out those predatory marketing methods that have contributed to their control of the industry.
For the first time, I can understand the complex litigation effort going on between the Federal government and the many States and Microsoft. I now appreciate why it has been so difficult to prove what is obvious from the evidence.
Supporters and opponents of Microsoft will both find this book worth reading. Both will have gained a great insight into how the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department and their European equivalent are constrained in handling companies in the modern electronic computer era. At the same time, the reader will gain a greater respect for the challenges faced by Bill Gates and his team as a small company, years ago.
I strongly recommend "The Microsoft File" to anyone who is in the computer industry, in the legal community, a user of computer software, or to anyone who has been trying to understand why the Federal government won't leave Microsoft alone. Thanks to Microsoft, that includes just about everyone.
Rating: 2
Summary: A little too tabloidish for my taste.
Comment: I bought this book hoping to find the real "case against Bill Gates", or more specifically against Microsoft. Goodness knows he and his cronies made plenty of secret business deals that, exposed to the light of day, would really damage the company. A book detailing (and, more importantly, documenting) all these things I've been trying to tell people for years would at the least make me seem less of a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist among my peers.
But, unfortunately, this book seems to concentrate mainly on what kind of a person Bill Gates is, including a truly baffling amount of coverage of Bill's courting of some woman who worked for Microsoft. I don't care about that [stuff]; I want to see the LEGAL case against him, not things that belong in the gossip column.
Thus disillusioned, I never finished the book, so for all I know it may contain what I hoped to find, but if so, it's not in the first half of the book.
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Title: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates by Jennifer Edstrom, Marlin Eller ISBN: 0805057544 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts Its Competition by Randall E. Stross ISBN: 020132797X Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: MICROSOFT SECRETS: HOW THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL SOFTWARE COMPANY CREATES TECHNOLOGY, SHAPES MARKETS, AND MANAGES PEOPLE by Michael A. Cusumano ISBN: 0684855313 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 04 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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