The year is 1997, and despite the machinations of its rivals,
Microsoft is master of the digital universe and the darling of
corporate America. Windows and Office generate staggering profits,
the company's share price is stratospheric, and Bill Gates is the
preeminent icon of the information age. No outsider could guess
what Gates knew -- that the most powerful threat to Microsoft's
prized Windows platform came not from Sun or Netscape or AOL or
even from the U.S. Department of Justice, but from within the
company's own ranks.
"Breaking Windows" tells the story of the battle for the soul of
Microsoft that raged inside the company from 1997 to 2000 and
continues to reverberate today. Drawing on hundreds of e-mails
among Microsoft executives, trial testimony, and exclusive
interviews with Gates and his chief lieutenants, "Wall Street
Journal" reporter David Bank reveals the bitter maneuvering between
what he calls Microsoft's "Windows hawks" and its "Internet doves."
On one side were the fierce defenders of the hegemony of Windows,
on the other those who championed a new way of doing business based
on the Internet's "open standards." The reformers wanted to break
free from the legacy of Windows and dare to compete on the merits
of their software. At the center of this pitched battle stood
Gates, the tactical genius who had created the company in his own
image and who now accepts full responsibility for his fateful
choices. "Every mistake you can lay at my feet," he told Bank, who
takes him at his word -- offering the first critique of Gates's
leadership not from the perspective of government prosecutors or
envious software rivals but from "inside the company itself."
Ambitious in scope and surprising in its conclusions, "Breaking
Windows" contains sharply drawn portraits of key past and present
executives, including Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, Brad Silverberg,
Adam Bosworth, and Paul Maritz. Bank argues persuasively that the
rifts within Microsoft underlie many of its recent troubles -- from
the antitrust courtroom debacle to the exodus of many of the
company's most talented employees to Gates's own fall from grace as
a corporate leader and technology visionary. Yet even now, Bank
contends, Gates could embrace the new rules of competition and
restore Microsoft to leadership, perhaps ushering in a new era of
openness and innovation.
"Breaking Windows" breaks new ground in its analysis of
Microsoft's past and future business strategies. As Microsoft faces
the waning importance of Windows, rallies behind XML, and confronts
the open-source insurgency, the past Bank reveals is vital to
understanding the future of this company and the still unfinished
digital revolution it helped unleash.
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