How the Web Was Won

That Microsoft was late getting onto the Web is a common piece of corporate lore. For Andrews, who for more than 10 years has covered Microsoft for the Seattle Times and is the coauthor of the balanced Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America, the nuts and bolts of how the company has rebounded to dominate the browser market is a milestone of corporate history. As such, he treats it lovingly, lingering over memos, basking in the company's high-stakes, big-money energy and spotlighting various corporate players as they maneuver the monolith into pole position. Andrews makes clear that Microsoft had been thinking at least peripherally about Web-like technology since 1990. Even before rival browser-purveyor Netscape went public in mid-1995 (creating a $3 billion company), the race had already started. The story is familiar: technologies crop up as challengers, only to fall or be absorbed. Internet Explorer becomes part of a desktop bundle. Antitrust suits are fended off. IE becomes something of a standard. Andrews's minute descriptions--though often slow moving--of the technology and of the problem-solving approaches of Microsoft and its rivals will fascinate tech-heads and intrigue the uninitiated. Yet, as Andrews notes, Microsoft's victory may not be permanent: the software giant is threatened by AOL's purchase of rival Netscape and its alliance with operating-system competitor Sun Microsystems, by the ""open-source"" movement that advocates giving users direct access to program code, and by the government's ongoing antitrust action. The notoriously volatile technology business may yet render at least the title of this book premature. Photos not seen by PW. (June)