The Microsoft File

The Microsoft File is an extraordinary fly-on-the-wall account of Microsoft's intent to monopolize the computer industry. Wendy Goldman Rohm takes you to the inner sanctum of Microsoft, has you sit in on meetings between Microsoft and important customers and competitors, and looks at the struggles of the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice as they try to develop a strategy to counter one of the most serious charges of market manipulation since John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

The Microsoft File is based on information from not one but many "Deep Throats," as well as internal documents that tell a story of:

> How Microsoft's predatory marketing and pricing behavior belies its claims of fair competition.

> How Microsoft killed the market for a competitor's operating system, a system that could have challenged MS-DOS.

> How bugging devices were found in the hotel room of a supposed business partner of Microsoft's the day before a critical meeting with Microsoft.

> How Microsoft inserted hidden code in the beta version of Windows 3.1, creating fear in the marketplace that competing products would crash and adding a byte in the final version that was marketed so the hidden code wouldn't appear on the screen.

> How close Apple came to discarding the Macintosh operating system for Windows, and the real reason why Bill Gates decided to invest some $250 million in Apple.

> How Microsoft, despite nondisclosure agreements, obtained and used technological secrets from competitors.

> How the biggest mergers in the software industry unfolded, blow-by-blow, as Microsoft's competitors tried to survive the increasing power of the Gates juggernaut.

Is Microsoft's rise as the world's most powerful and successful company a classic example of the free market, as many Microsoft apologists contend? Is its success, and the failure of other companies, the result of the creative destruction that makes capitalism so strong?  The Microsoft File suggests that other forces were at work.

Wendy Goldman Rohm  is an award-winning writer who has covered the high-tech world for over a decade. Her articles have appeared in, among other publications, Wired, Upside, the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, and Information Week, and have been syndicated by The New York Times Syndicate International. Rohm is also a playwright and poet, and lives with her daughter in Evanston, Illinois. She welcomes correspondence at wendy@compuserve.com.