Microsoft

Writing about Gates and Microsoft, generally uncritically, has become a minor industry in its own right and probably one of the more profitable ones. This page offers a round-up of some of the major books.

It covers -

• the road to the future
• inside out
• competition and antitrust
• corbis

A chronology of the group's development is here.

     the road to the future?

Business At Light Speed (New York: Viking 1999), a communique to Planet Earth by Microsoft's CEO, confirms criticisms of his The Road Ahead (New York: Viking 1995) that Mr Gates hadn't come to terms with the web. Essential reading, but we don't recommend either book for original insights or entertainment.

For a condensed version see Bill Gates Speaks (New York: Wiley 1998) edited by Janet Lowe, although when we're feeling particularly jaundiced about pronouncements by the Big G we are inclined to think that there is more sustenance in Harpo Speaks (London: Limelight 1988) by Harpo Marx & Rowland Barber.

Jonathan Gatlin's hagiographic Bill Gates: The Path To The Future (New York: Avon 1999) and Robert Slater's Microsoft Rebooted: How Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Reinvented Their Company (New York: Portfolio 2004) are thin, apparently wowed by an environment in which a MS insider could describe the US$250 million marketing campaign for Windows 95 as

what God would have done to announce the Ten Commandments, if only he had Bill Gates's money.

The essays in The Future of Software (Cambridge: MIT Press 1995) edited by Derek Leebaert suggest that the 'road ahead' won't be owned by Microsoft. Dean Takahashi's Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution (Roseville: Prima 2002) offers another perspective.  

     inside out

Paul Andrews' How the Web was Won: Microsoft from Windows to the Web - The inside story of how Bill Gates and his band of Internet idealists transformed a Software Empire (New York: Broadway 1999) is well-researched but distressingly reverent. Gates is not Mother Teresa, despite efforts to buff & polish his public persona through large-scale philanthropy - sometimes with strings attached - involving his wife and father.

More sober reports are provided in Overdrive: Bill Gates & the Race to Control Cyberspace (New York: Wiley 1998) by James Wallace - updating his Hard Drive: Bill Gates & the Making of the Microsoft Empire (New York: Harper 1993) - and the portraits of Clark and Netscape identified here.

The glossy Inside Out: Microsoft In Our Own Words (New York: Warner 2000) is the sort of production that gives propaganda a bad name; appropriately all Microsoft employees are reputed to have received a copy. There's another 'inside' account in Adam Barr's Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: What I Learned in 10 Years As A Microsoft Programmer (New York: iUniverse 2001).

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside (New York: Owl 1999) by Jennifer Edstrom & Marlin Eller presents a devastating view from the inside (Edstrom, for example, is the daughter of Microsoft's chief spin doctor), in contrast to the picture of vision, harmony and exemplary ethics painted by Randall Stross in The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts Its Competition (Reading: Addison-Wesley 1996).

We would have preferred to have seen more analysis of what the New York Times decries as vaporware, hidden API's (bugs in MS code to trip up rivals' software) and "ideas repeatedly, and blatantly, stolen from competitors" - is MS unique or merely a particularly egregious example of industry practice?

Nathan Myrhvold, dinosaur buff and one-time Gates lieutenant, was profiled in Wired in 1996.  Paul Allen, Gates' partner and Star Trek fan, had been anatomised in issues 2.08 and 7.12. There is an account of Steve Ballmer in Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (New York: Morrow 2002) by Fredric Maxwell.

Fred Moody's I Sing The Body Electronic (New York: Viking 1995) gives an entertaining and, alas, apparently accurate picture of life as a Microsoft net-slave. For us it was more perceptive than G Pascal Zachary's Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft (New York: Warner 1996). 

     competition and antitrust

As John Heilemann notes in the excellent Pride Before The Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates & The End of the Microsoft Era (New York: HarperCollins 2001), while the legal outcome of the case is likely to be indecisive, the litigation has exposed Microsoft's spin machine and demonstrated that at best Gates is economical with the truth.

Wendy Rohm's The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates (New York: Times 1998) is a hard-hitting account of corporate skullduggery and ineptitude, considered by some US analysts to have been a trigger for the antitrust action.

There is a defence in Winners, Losers & Microsoft: Competitions & Antitrust in High Technology (Oakland: Independent 1999) by Stan Liebowitz & Stephen Margolis, recommended for fans and foes alike, and the less persuasive The Keystone Advantage (Boston: Harvard Business School Press 2004) by Marco Iansiti & Roy Levien -

Gates and Microsoft pursued what may have been the most successful keystone strategy of all time. We believe that it is essential for the health and vigor of our economy that the crucial roles played by these organizations be safeguarded and reinforced.

The technical literature on bundling, network effects and other aspects of US v Microsoft is voluminous. One starting point is Timothy Bresnahan's The Economics of The Microsoft Case (PDF).

A case for splitting up MS is made in Competition, Innovation & the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace (Boston: Kluwer 1999) by Jeffrey Eisenach & Thomas Lenard. A perspective is provided by Folded, Spindled & Mutilated: Economic Analysis & US versus IBM (New York: MIT Press 1983) by Franklin Fisher, John McGovern & Joel Greenwood.

The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest Man ... and the People Who Hate Him (New York: Times 1999) is a wacky ride at high speed past the egos and misdemeanors of poor Bill Gates and the likes of fellow billionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle.

David Bank's Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft (New York: Free Press 2001) is another work on the 'battle for the soul of MS', arguing that a war to the death between its Windows and internet wings hobbled the war with the federal government.

Ken Auletta's 50 page profile in The New Gilded Age: Profiles from The New Yorker (New York: Random 2000) is crisper. It is a succinct, and overall more insightful version of the book-length treatment in his World War 3.0: Microsoft & Its Enemies (New York: Random 2000), which compares unfavourably with Heilemann.

A perspective on Microsoft's dominance of the desktop is provided by Singer (in 1912 the seventh largest company in the world by market capitalisation). After acquisition in 1906 of competitor Wheeler & Wilson its share of the US 'family' market reached nearly 60% and its share of global markets climbed from an estimated 27% in the 1870s to 90% in 1913 (PDF).

     and Corbis

Gates has also gained attention as owner of Corbis, the major image library (intellectual property rights ownership and licensing) described in a profile on the Ketupa.net media resource site.





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