The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates, originally published by Random House in 1998, is a fly-on-the-wall account of Microsoft's and Bill Gates' predatory practices, and the struggles of the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice as they try to develop a strategy to counter one of the most serious charges of market manipulation since John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.
The book is based on the author's interviews with Microsoft executives, Bill Gates himself (in person and in a direct email correspondence), federal sources, and scores of witnesses to the events described. It also includes information based on a treasure trove of Microsoft internal documents marked "secret and confidential," presented to the author by her sources, and also requested by the Department of Justice. The DOJ put the book into evidence three months after it was published, and the antitrust trial of Microsoft began. Senate hearings were also conducted, inspired by Rohm's book, and Senator Orrin Hatch personally requested the author's presence at these hearings.
Long before the "me too" movement, the 1998 book also documents Gates' relationships with women inside and outside the workplace, an issue that came to the forefront in news headlines in 2021 with the breakup of Gates' marriage and the evidence being collected in the Jeffrey Epstein case. It also documents the role of Microsoft senior executives in helping Gates secure women as needed.
While reporting on the antitrust charges against Gates and Microsoft, numerous eyewitness sources told the author of Gates' habit of bringing women, with whom he was having personal affairs, paid and unpaid, to business meetings.
Against this backdrop, the book tells a story of the beginnings of the information age, and the rise of a modern day Rockefeller, who, like Rockefeller, leveraged his power for unfair advantage, in violation of the U.S. Sherman and Clayton Acts, America's antitrust laws established during the days of the robber barons at the turn of the century.
Was Microsoft's rise as the world's most powerful and successful company a classic example of the free market, as many Microsoft apologists contend? Is its success, and the failure of other companies, the result of the creative destruction that makes capitalism so strong? The Microsoft File suggests that other forces were at work.
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