Product Description

James Wallace brings readers up to date on the Gates saga to 1997 and reveals the inside story of the struggle to keep Microsoft on top in the World Wide Web game. Based on interviews with friends, colleagues, competitors, and both current and former Microsoft employees, the text offers an inside view as one of the world's leading business minds faces the challenge of his career.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1746831 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
While Microsoft was occupied with the largest, most expensive consumer marketing effort in history, the launch of Windows 95, Netscape was equally busy capturing the Web browser market. By mid-1995 it looked as if Bill Gates and company had missed the paradigm shift created by the Internet, and many pundits doubted Microsoft could recover. Meanwhile, the Justice Department was aggressively investigating claims of unfair practices levied by Microsoft's competitors. Suddenly the company found itself in the unfamiliar role of lumbering corporate giant--and underdog. James Wallace's Overdrive, his sequel to Hard Drive, is the story of Microsoft's response to this challenge. A veteran investigative reporter, the author paints a vivid portrait of Gates's determination and competitive ferocity, with a host of revealing anecdotes and details as backdrop. The battle for control of cyberspace is far from over, but Microsoft is clearly not to be trifled with. The tale of how the company repositioned itself in the race makes for fascinating reading.

From Booklist
Wallace, coauthor of Harddrive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire (1992), reports on Bill, ex-nerd with excess 'tude, Gates' latest venture: making mincemeat of Netscape and other Internet companies.

Review
Overdrive at times reads like a cross between an old-fashioned melodrama and a celebrity exposé.... Although fairly entertaining throughout, the book picks up speed in the last few chapters as Microsoft wakes up and challenges rival upstart Netscape. -- The New York Times Book Review, J. D. Biersdorfer

Right now, if you need a Microsoft fix, there's Overdrive: Bill Gates and The Race to Control Cyberspace. Written by James Wallace, co-author of the earlier Gates book Hard Drive, Overdrive offers a hodgepodge of facts and allegations about Gates and Microsoft. Despite its weaknesses as a work of journalism and history, Overdrive is not boring. Wallace has amassed some intriguing, if ultimately unproven, charges in this breezy, unauthorized and unexpurgated version of the man and his billions. Overdrive raises valid questions about Gates's reputation as an innovator. When Microsoft finally awakened from its Internet slumber, Wallace suggests, the firm nearly botched it. -- Upside, Jonathan Littman

Customer Reviews

The Whole Story?
I enjoyed reading Overdrive and while initialy reserving judgement on a book that uses journalistic sources rather than references, appreciated alot of the connivery going on. The observation about Philippe Kahn, a long time nemesis who dared, and Bill Gates, being like matter and anti-matter trying to exist in the same space was great. The Spyglass deal on how the legal manouveurs came about to attain the Mosaic browser and the amazement captured by quotes from the Spyglass people directly involved when they found it was to be distributed "free", was one word: amazing. The plentiful quotes from all the people involved, and the detail on the deal making involved say with Java, the centrepiece of the next revolution of technology, both in and outside of Microsoft, bespeaks well of the energy this author devoted to his topic and the obvious cooperation he received from everyone involved but surprisingly, the increasingly withdrawn, Bill Gates. I think however that Wallace should have put more into his closing chapter, leaving a certain empty feeling just after closing the book. I thought a more speculative ending with more on the likely fallout of the dichotomy between Gates balancing anti-competitive restraints on unfavourable change with the favourable change, all within his control, would have been more enlightening. It is though very disturbing to me that on one heartbeat is portrayed an industry domination resting, like no other that has been attained in US business history but that is just the way indeed it has been allowed to happen. The conclusion from this book and the previous one, makes it shallow, in some way, in that it is very difficult to see anything but an imploding Microsoft, taking down financial markets, in its wake, without this one man, that may in fact be an embellishment. The moxy gamesmanship, the menacing marketing, and the obsessive determinination to beat all comers to a pulp, that Wallace has captured of William Henry Gates III, while I am sure is not the final word on this company it nevertheless is a compelling, disturbing story of either success or excess. This one I enjoyed.

Don't miss this book,Gates's fans, if u had read Hard Drive
Don't miss this book if u had read James Wallace's Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the making of Microsoft empire. Because this book contain Gates's next way to mantain his empire from internet wave. Just like Hard Drive ,this book is well written: Complete and detail but still easy to read and understand. It is still the easiest to read and understand Gates's book compare with other similar book.

Excellent Update on HardDrive
This book filled the gap that was left after HardDrive left off. but of course, i would want an update to this book already, its been out just over a year, and its almost outdated. Just to show you how fast Microsoft moves