The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts its Competition.

• Author: Lohr, Steve

By Randall E. Stross Addison-Wesley, $25

In February 1995, federal judge Stanley Sporkin rejected the antitrust settlement reached a year earlier by the Justice Department and the Microsoft Corporation. Judge Sporkin set aside the consent degree, saying it was a mere wrist-slap that did little to curb the big software maker's "monopolistic practices." His decision, Sporkin explained, was based on his own study of the issues, particularly his recent reading of Hard Drive, a book that dealt harshly with Microsoft.

Bill Gates and Microsoft's legal team were aghast that a federal judge would be swayed by a book written by a pair of Seattle newspaper reporters, and, indeed, Sporkin's ruling was eventually overturned. Yet ever since that unnerving episode, the young software dynamos in suburban Seattle must have longed for a sympathetic treatment that would present Microsoft's case--in particular, the case Microsoft would most like to see made is that antitrust watchdogs, the courts, competitors, and some economists should stop fretting, lean back, and just let the markets of the information age work their magic.

It is impossible to imagine a book doing so more forcefully than The Microsoft Way by Randall E. Stross. In the author's view, the arguments of Microsoft's rivals are nothing more than self-interested carping; the Justice Department's antitrust officials don't grasp how high-technology markets work; and Microsoft won its dominant role in the industry fair and square. And, he asks, where is the public policy issue when the price of Microsoft's products keep dropping?

These points are all--more or less--reasonable. The trouble with the book is that Stross makes them with such histrionic overkill that they undermine his case. The heavy breathing begins with his depiction of Microsoft as generally hated--as, in his terms, "the apparent apotheosis of crude, ruthless, business power" and later as "the handy villain" His book then becomes a "revisionist view" set against the misguided popular opinion of Microsoft as the epitome of corporate nastiness. Of course, Stross is a professor of business at San Jose State University and a fellow at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University, so perhaps at the Silicon Valley dinner parties he attends people despise Microsoft. But the last time I looked, Microsoft was one of the most admired companies in America, and Bill Gates was a national hero. He may not be Michael Jordan, but all...