Edstrom, Jennifer and Eller, Marlin. Barbarians Led by Gates: Microsoft
From the Inside -- How the World's Richest Corporation Wields Its Power.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998. 256 pages.
In 1999, the United Nations Development Program said in its annual
global review, that Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer have more
assets, nearly $140 billion, than the combined gross national product of
the 43 least-developed countries and their 600 million people. It's small
wonder that some Microsoft insiders have begun to think twice about the
situation. This book is the result of an unusual collaboration between
Jennifer Edstrom (the daughter of PR guru Pam Edstrom), and Marlin Eller,
a programmer and project manager at Microsoft until he quit in 1995.
Eller confirms that Microsoft's software is deliberately "gnarly" and
excessively layered, mainly to keep outside developers from becoming too
independent. Time and again, Microsoft's strategy has been to see who is
doing well with new applications, and then leverage Windows to copy the
competition, overtake them, and finally crush them. While this book makes
a useful contribution, it's unfortunately packaged as a "colorful history"
that "dishes up the dirt." Hopefully it won't take too many more years
before Microsoft is properly judged by some of the social and ethical
standards for corporations that began to emerge in 2002. So far, Gates
and Ballmer are still laughing all the way to the bank.
ISBN 0-8050-5755-2
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