Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
The Internet Revolution, like all great industrial changes, has made the world's elephantine media companies tremble that their competitors-whether small and nimble mice or fellow elephants-will get to new terrain first and seize its commanding heights. In a climate in which fear and insecurity are considered healthy emotions, corporate violence becomes commonplace. In the blink of an eye-or the time it has taken slogans such as "The Internet changes everything" to go from hyperbole to banality-"creative destruction" has wracked the global economy on an epic scale.No one has been more powerful or felt more fear or reacted more violently than Bill Gates and Microsoft. Afraid that any number of competitors might outflank them-whether Netscape or Sony or AOL Time Warner or Sun or AT&T or Linux-based companies that champion the open-source movement or some college student hacking in his dorm room-Microsoft has waged holy war on all foes, leveraging its imposing strengths.
In World War 3.0, Ken Auletta chronicles this fierce conflict from the vantage of its most important theater of operations: the devastating second front opened up against Bill Gates's empire by the United States government. The book's narrative spine is United States v. Microsoft, the government's massive civil suit against Microsoft for allegedly stifling competition and innovation on a broad scale. With his superb writerly gifts and extraordinary access to all the principal parties, Ken Auletta crafts this landmark confrontation into a tight, character- and incident-filled courtroom drama featuring the best legal minds of our time, including David Boies and Judge Richard Posner. And with the wisdom gleaned from covering the converging media, software, and communications industries for The New Yorker for the better part of a decade, Auletta uses this pivotal battle to shape a magisterial reckoning with the larger war and the agendas, personalities, and prospects of its many combatants.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
The Internet Revolution, like all great industrial changes, has made the world's elephantine media companies tremble that their competitors-whether small and nimble mice or fellow elephants-will get to new terrain first and seize its commanding heights. In a climate in which fear and insecurity are considered healthy emotions, corporate violence becomes commonplace. In the blink of an eye-or the time it has taken slogans such as "The Internet changes everything" to go from hyperbole to banality-"creative destruction" has wracked the global economy on an epic scale. No one has been more powerful or felt more fear or reacted more violently than Bill Gates and Microsoft. Afraid that any number of competitors might outflank them-whether Netscape or Sony or AOL Time Warner or Sun or AT&T or Linux-based companies that champion the open-source movement or some college student hacking in his dorm room-Microsoft has waged holy war on all foes, leveraging its imposing strengths. In World War 3.0, Ken Auletta chronicles this fierce conflict from the vantage of its most important theater of operations: the devastating second front opened up against Bill Gates's empire by the United States government. The book's narrative spine is United States v. Microsoft, the government's massive civil suit against Microsoft for allegedly stifling competition and innovation on a broad scale. With his superb writerly gifts and extraordinary access to all the principal parties, Ken Auletta crafts this landmark confrontation into a tight, character- and incident-filled courtroom drama featuring the best legal minds of our time, including David Boies and Judge Richard Posner. And with the wisdom gleaned from covering the converging media, software, and communications industries for The New Yorker for the better part of a decade, Auletta uses this pivotal battle to shape a magisterial reckoning with the larger war and the agendas, personalities, and prospects of its many combatants.Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewIn World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies, Ken Auletta tells the story of history's most expensive antitrust case, the two-year-long courtroom battle between Microsoft and the Department of Justice that was estimated to have cost Microsoft alone over $100 million in legal fees. In a captivating book, parts of which were originally published as essays in The New Yorker, Auletta relates how Justice Department lawyer Joel Klein originally decided to challenge Microsoft for alleged anticompetitive practices directed against Netscape, how super-lawyer David Boies turned the government's originally weak case into a sure win, how the two sides came within inches of settling, and how Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson finally came to his now infamous decision to break up the corporate Goliath.
But this well-crafted and highly readable narrative is more than just a reporter's digest of the facts of the Microsoft trial. Auletta also paints vivid portraits of many of the trial's key figures, among them Boies, Judge Jackson, and Bill Gates himself. Although he readily admits that Bill Gates possesses a rare form of genius, Auletta portrays the 45-year-old tycoon as essentially an overgrown adolescent. He is fiercely competitive and quick to lose his temper, as when he broke down in frustration and shouted, "The government is wrong! They're just wrong!" He uses teenage jargon such as "hard core," a now infamous Microsoft term meaning tough and combative. And his two literary heroes are Holden Caulfield and Jay Gatsby, archetypal figures of adolescent stubbornness and romanticism. Although these characteristics may have helped propel Gates's entrepreneurial career, encouraging him to take risks that others would deem impossible, they also made him appear arrogant and untrustworthy in the eyes of Judge Jackson.
Like Gates, government lawyer David Boies is a risk taker, but unlike him, the slightly disheveled-looking trial lawyer is completely an adult. Boies, who gained even greater visibility for his Supreme Court defense of Al Gore last December, thrives on playing the game. Inside and outside of the courtroom, he is a high-stakes gambler. In an interview with Auletta, he admitted that "had Microsoft asked first, I might have represented Microsoft. I certainly don't think Microsoft was an evil empire. Nor do I think so now." Nonetheless, he went after Microsoft without mercy, pulling no punches in an all-out attempt to beat the opposition.
Boies's case presumably convinced Judge Jackson, though many trial watchers, particularly those inside Microsoft, believe that the judge was prejudiced against the corporation from the onset. Although Jackson often appears dim-witted and, according to Auletta, actually fell asleep in court on one occasion, Boies has said of him that he is much like Presidents Truman and Reagan. All three men "had been underestimated, had their intellects questioned, yet surprised critics with their tenacious convictions and vigorous common sense." Reading the book, it is hard not to agree with Boies's assessment. In fact, anyone who reads this book will walk away with not only a detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of the case against Microsoft but also an increased understanding of the chief players' methods and motives.
--Laura Beers
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
He painstakingly recreates the broader context of the conflict, not only Microsoft's allegedly predatory behavior toward Netscape Navigator, but also its supposedly bullying treatment of companies like Apple, Intel, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and even, arguably, I.B.M.— New York Times
Adam Liptak
Auletta has talked to everyone, has read everything and has set it all down...—New York Times Book Review
Christian Science Monitor
The author, a media critic for The New Yorker, provides a minutely detailed description of the case that is enlivened byu his remarkable personal access to the combatants, including Gates, as we follow them negotiating the legal land mines of the Sherman Antitrust Act.—Christian Science Monitor
James Buchan
A long and interesting new book...At the heart of the book is a superb courtroom diary.—New York Observer