World War 3.0

In one sentence: Ken Auletta's 2001 account of the 1998 Microsoft antitrust trial — Ben read it specifically to prepare for Acquired's Microsoft Volume II episode, and quotes it at length on Bill Gates's videotaped deposition and his relationship with the trial judge.

Overview

World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies was published by Random House in 2001; its author, Ken Auletta, is a longtime New Yorker media writer. The book is devoted entirely to the US Department of Justice's antitrust suit against Microsoft — from the 1998 filing, through Bill Gates's infamous videotaped deposition, to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's finding that Microsoft was a monopoly and his order to break up the company, to the appellate court's removal of Jackson from the case and the eventual, comparatively mild settlement. Auletta interviewed parties on multiple sides of the case to reconstruct the maneuvering both inside and outside the courtroom, in particular the procedural fight over whether videotaped depositions could be entered into evidence at trial.

Why It's Worth Reading

After walking through Gates's notorious deposition — where he repeatedly quibbled over the difference between a "memorandum" and an "email" and smirked at opposing counsel David Boies — Ben poses a question: Microsoft's legal strategy had been built on the assumption that depositions would only ever be submitted as written transcripts, so how did video footage end up leaking out anyway? Ben says this is exactly what the book he read to prepare for the episode answers, and quotes it directly: "Microsoft feared that Judge Jackson was a foe. He had made a number of pretrial rulings deemed hostile to the company... They groused, but only in the most unguarded private moments because they were terrified of offending him that Jackson was biased and would rule in favor of the government." The passage resolves the exact question David had just asked — how that ruling ever stuck.

Sourcing

The book is the core source for the antitrust segment of the Microsoft Volume II episode: the account of why Gates's videotaped deposition ended up public, and Microsoft's private suspicion of Judge Jackson's bias, are both drawn directly from it. Ben states explicitly that he read it specifically to prepare for the episode, and that it is "exclusively about this trial."