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T A B L E__T A L K Netscape vs. Internet Explorer: The showdown continues in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Password spamming Growing up in gameland Bill's don Return of the hex-crazed wargamers Results of Challenge No. 9 - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE - - - - - - - - - -
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Instant histories of
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SPEEDING THE NET BY SCOTT ROSENBERG | If journalism is, as the saying goes, the first draft of history, then books are more like its final draft, or its proofs. The reporter works from the eye of the storm to meet some mad deadline; the author, typically, has the advantage of time to reflect and perfect -- and of knowing how the story ends. But not in today's overheated technology-business book market. Eager to cash in on public fascination with the personalities and strategies of the computer industry, and desperate to grab public mind-share before the competition, book publishers in this field are beginning to rush out half-baked volumes that shout "Edit me!" from every page. The high-profile, high-stakes battles between Microsoft, Netscape and the U.S. Department of Justice have fanned this trend to a new frenzy. In the war for the Web-browser market, the software industry kicked itself into a furious fast-forward mode of rapid development cycles and buggy releases. The publishing industry is now following suit. The perils of this emulation are on full display in two new books that cover the Microsoft-Netscape story from different angles, "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" and "Speeding the Net." By far the better of the two, "Speeding the Net" -- a history of Netscape by Josh Quittner and Michelle Slatalla -- is hobbled chiefly by sheer prematurity: It must end before its tale does. "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" -- an "insider's" portrait of Microsoft by Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller -- provides a more vivid tableau of the havoc that Web speed can play on the publishing process. The book is so unfinished, even a software company might think twice about releasing it. Eller is a veteran Microsoft developer who spent 13 years coding in the trenches in Redmond, Wash. Edstrom is a writer whose surname is familiar to all journalists who've ever written about Microsoft -- she is the daughter ("estranged," according to the book's press release) of Pamela Edstrom, the company's longtime lead publicist. Together, the two promise to present, as their subtitle puts it, "Microsoft From the Inside: How the World's Richest Corporation Wields Its Power." Given the negative slant from that subtitle onward, we can safely assume that the project did not have the blessing of Edstrom mere. And how does Microsoft wield its power? According to Eller and Edstrom, clumsily. Stupidly. Or, in the ultimate Microsoft put-down, randomly. The chief message of "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" is: Forget the image of Microsoft as a Machiavellian colossus that has built a gleaming empire based on technical brilliance and marketing genius. Microsoft is an "essentially chaotic" enterprise that got where it is today by pure luck -- by "covering the table" so that at least some of its bets would pay off. N E X T_P A G E .|. When Bill Gates demanded, "Be more like the Mac!" - - - - - - - - - -
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the browser wars
