Review: Impressive reporting on 'Breaking Windows'

By L.D. Meagher
Special to CNN

Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft
by David Bank
Free Press
Nonfiction
288 pages

(CNN) -- There's nothing wrong with Microsoft that Bill Gates can't fix. By leaving. That's the startling conclusion reached by some of the company's highest-level executives during the protracted antitrust lawsuit brought by federal and state governments, as reported by David Bank of the Wall Street Journal. His book "Breaking Windows" presents a stark indictment of the way the richest man in the world has managed the most successful corporation in the history of free enterprise.

Ironically, the portrait Bank paints of the man at the top of the Microsoft heap is a sympathetic one. He gives Gates enormous credit for building the company into a behemoth that can squash its rivals, while at the same time engendering a deep personal loyalty among the creative minds that drive Microsoft's technical innovations. The critical moment, according to Bank, came when Microsoft belatedly recognized the threat the Internet posed to its core business.

In clear terms even the least computer-savvy reader can understand, Bank traces the development of both the Windows operating system and the explosive growth of the Internet. He makes it clear that the crystal ball Gates used to stay at the forefront of the software industry failed him badly. He didn't see that an Internet-based operating system would render Windows not merely obsolete, but irrelevant. When the realization finally dawned, Gates made a fateful decision -- to use Microsoft's Internet arm to protect its operating system.

"Microsoft, as usual, wanted it both ways: the Web and Windows," Bank writes, "the new thing and the old thing, offense and defense. The company wanted to create a next-generation Internet platform while at the same time defending Windows' dominance. Either strategy separately had merits. Straddling the line is what mucked things up."

Bill Gates

Bank's reporting is impressive. He has pored through thousands of documents -- including internal Microsoft emails -- collected during the antitrust proceedings. He pieces together a topographical map of the Microsoft mindset and chronicles the inner struggles waged within the company. As a result, he provides a clear picture of the forces that eased Gates out of his role as hands-on commander of Microsoft's day-to-day activities. In fact, Bank may understand what happened better than Gates does.

"Breaking Windows" is a rare profile of a company, in that it allows the reader to see both the close-in operations of Microsoft and the broader picture of the external forces operating against it. It's a highly readable account, a testament to Bank's abilities as a writer. And it exposes a grand irony. Now that the Justice Department has withdrawn its demand that the company be split in two -- one entity for Windows, the other for Internet applications -- Microsoft is in the process of doing just that: at long last uncoupling its Internet Explorer from its operating system. It's a step Bank argues should have been taken years ago, and would have been, had Bill Gates not gotten in the way.