BOOK EXCERPT
MARCH 22, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 11
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If there ever was a time for Microsoft employees to slap their boss with a reality check, this is it. The antitrust trial is on a six-week hiatus. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson urged the two sides to come up with a settlement in the interim. Intel settled its suit with the FTC last week before the case even went to court, sidestepping the kind of white-hot publicity that has roasted Microsoft. And yet the only word to come out of Redmond is a leaked memo from Microsoft lawyer David Heiner to the executive team. Shunning all evidence to the contrary--including Judge Jackson's stern admonitions and chief prosecutor David Boies' demolition of defense witnesses--Heiner insists that the government's case is a house of cards built on "various random incidents or pieces of e-mail." Bad news, it seems, will have to wait a little longer.
Are the two faces of Gates irreconcilable? Not entirely. Both are in love with e-mail, even though one has been publicly burned by his. In this antitrust case, Gates' In and Out boxes are the nearest things to a smoking gun, as far as the feds are concerned. Among their favorite extracts: "Winning Internet browser share is very important to us," "Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?" and "I think there is a very powerful deal of some kind we could do with Netscape."
You might think a man who has had his company e-mail captured by the government, read aloud in a courtroom and printed around the world would be put off electronic messaging for life. But Gates the author adores the medium. His ideal business model has management inundating its underlings with e-mails in a free-and-easy manner that would give some corporate lawyers a heart attack. "There's no doubt that e-mail flattens the hierarchical structure of an organization," he writes. "It encourages people to speak up."
As an article of faith, it's touching. As a core principle of the wired age--the free-flow of information--it's the one thing that holds our vision of this complex character together. And if it doesn't always work out in reality as Gates the author imagines it will--if Gates the defendant doesn't much resemble the portrait he painted in those bold brush strokes--that's hardly surprising. Few of us ever do.END
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