Even though the Microsoft anti-trust trial finished quite a while ago, I just finished reading Ken Auletta’s book on the famous case, World War 3.0: Microsoft and its Enemies. As someone who followed the case quite closely (I’m a geek, what can I say?) I can honestly say the only new stuff in the book for me was the character sketches created by Auletta of all the major players.

When following the news and opinion articles, you tend to focus on the specifics of the case and the two parties, but not the individual people themselves. World War 3.0 does an excellent job of describing David Boies, or Bill Gates, or Judge Jackson as people, including some discussion on what they do outside of the courtroom. You end up with a better sense of everyone involved.

I did have to chuckle at the fact that no where in the book’s pages is Google mentioned. Auletta spends quite a bit of time talking about Microsoft’s main competitors, and the reader is left with a sense that after the trial is over, the battle will be Microsoft versus AOL Time Warner. As we know now, the company is just Time Warner again, and they aren’t Microsoft’s main concern. Probably not even a secondary concern. Linux is correctly identified as a competitive concern, though not much time is spent talking about how the operating system could affect Microsoft. Also interesting to see how successful Firefox has become – the book doesn’t even come close to predicting that another browser might challenge IE.

While definitely an interesting read, I felt that the book was rushed in the final stages. There was far more time spent on the beginning of the case than on what might happen on appeal and thereafter. I also felt that the commentary on competition and the technology specifically was rather weak. If you’re looking for a good description of the trial, this probably isn’t the right book for you, unless you really want a better idea of the people involved. You can read more about the case at Wikipedia.

Read: Wikipedia