Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
by Stephen Manes, Paul Andrews
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paul Andrews, Stephen ManesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1994-01-21
ISBN: 0671880748
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Touchstone
Book Reviews of Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
Book Review: The golly-geewhiz boyscout version of the early Gates
Summary: 2 Stars
This is the version of Microsoft and the rise of Gates that you should read if you think that computers are utterly wonderful and fascinating things in themselves: it is full of breathless excitment, multiple exclamation points, and minute personal detail. The tone of the book would suggest that the development of software for the PC is as fantastic a technological achievement as putting men on the moon, or even, if you go along with the quote that precedes the introduction, as godlike as the creation of the universe. (I kid you not on that quote.)
However, if you think of computers as a flawed, though useful tool that you want to use, that you want to work for the task at hand and do not care to coax it through innumerable design flaws and bugs, that kind of ga-ga view is as preposterous as it is specious. I found reading this a dreary task of wending my way though a proliferation of silly adjectives and presumptions about the significance of what was being achieved. Don't get me wrong, I love my computer and its instant info access (particularly as a writer), but I do not equate it with anything as significant as the invention of movable type. If you never felt like a god while programming a hobbyist computer or shared kid geeks' excitment at telephoning a mainframe in the late 1960s - what these first programmers were achieving is never even explained, as the book assumes the reader should know - this gets pretty tedious after a few hundred pages of pure hyperbole. Unbelievable as it may seem, there are those of us who want their computers to work as reliably and simply as toasters (as an acquaintence, who is an employee at MS, characterised me).
That tone aside, you get a fairly good idea of how Gates did what he did up until the early 1990s. At building a great company, there is no question he was a genius. Moreover, it is interesting in that he understood and contributed to the early technology's development, yet had the guts, self confidence, and business smarts to do it all. Now that is something I deeply respect. He was lucky to be sure, but he was able to do what a lot of others couldn't. Gates made a huge number of path-breaking decisions about licensing, pricing schemes, intellectual property questions, etc., which are complex and extremely innovative and savvy.
Nonetheless, this book covers much of the same ground that "Hard Drive" does, and in fact offers much less than that book. In particular, this book does not question how Microsoft does business, i.e. whether it is unfair or unethical. As such, it is wholly admiring hagiography, even if it portrays Gates as an abrasive and very difficult person. You get virtually no insight into the FTC anti-trust case or the supposed unfair advantages the MS got from selling both the operating system and higher-level application which forces competitors to share their technology, while MS does not have to do so. Whatever your opinion, these are tough questions that need to be asked and debated.
As such, behind the florid razzle-dazzle rhetoric, this book fails to dig deeply. Indeed, I think they got a lot of what motivated Gates wrong: they imply that because he discovered people of equal talent in mathematics at Harvard and so went into computers and business instead. They explain little that you find in Hard Drive about his ruthless competitive spirit or how he incessently read about great conquerors as well as the hard core business press. He wanted to build an empire from an early age, and he loved computers in a way I will never comprehend.
With these criticisms in mind, I would not recommend this book for critical readers who want to understand the company. The authors, in my reading, unabashedly worship Gates and assume the reader shares their unbounded enthusiasm for software and computer technology. There is more to it than that, far more.
Not recommended.
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Summary of Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
Gates reveals the guiding genius behind the unparalleled success of the Microsoft Corporation-- the biggest and most profitable personal computer software company in history-- and exposes the intensely competitive tactics that help it dominate the desktops of America.Chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates is the most powerful person in the computer industry and the youngest self-made billionaire in history. His company's DOS and Windows programs are such universal standards that more than nine out of ten personal computers depend on Microsoft software. Under the "Microsoft Everywhere" rallying cry, Gates intends to expand his company's worldwide dominance to office equipment, communications, and home entertainment.
Vivid and definitive, Gates details the behind the scenes history of the personal computer industry and its movers and shakers, from Apple to IBM, from Steve Jobs to Ross Perot. Uncovering the inside stories of the bitter battle for control of the expanding personal computing market, Gates is a bracing, comprehensive portrait of the industry, the company, and the man-- and what they mean for a future where software is everything.
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