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PAUL SCHINDLER: What in the book is going to surprise people?
WENDY GOLDMAN ROHM: Probably the most surprising thing is all this stuff that Gates and his top executives and his army of PR people have denied publicly over and over again. When you read the book and see what their own internal documents say, you will see they have been painting quite an opposite picture publicly than the picture you get when you get a close-up, birds-eye view into what they're scheming amongst themselves, including the deliberate creation of incompatibilities with rival products. [This is] something that Gates has always said he has never engaged in, or that his executives have never engaged in.

Particularly now, in light of the [U.S. Department of Justice] lawsuit, he's been giving much lip service to the fact that "I'm a product guy." He's been saying that over and over again when asked in depositions about certain things. "I don't concern myself with hurting rivals. I'm concerned with building great products and with product innovation." That's a big buzz word for them these days in light of the lawsuit.

If you go back over time and you see them strategizing internally, you get the clearest picture of a bunch of men who are out to kill off competitors.

In fact, they use the words "killing people" over and over again.

"If you go back over time and you see them strategizing internally, you get the clearest picture of a bunch of men who are out to kill off competitors."

Here's a passage from the book that illustrates my point. This was in a memo from senior vice president Jim Allchin to other senior executives at Microsoft: "If you're going to kill someone, there isn't much reason to get worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Angry discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile with Novell while we pull the trigger."

SCHINDLER: Can you walk us through your techniques and sources?
ROHM: Yes, I can. It really amazes me. Some of those comments seem to be coming from misinformation that Microsoft has been spreading about the book. I kind of expected that. Every day of the week in the top newspapers in the country, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, there are front-page stories based on anonymous sources. This is news we read every day.

I have used the same standard journalistic practices that every top-notch journalist uses. As you know, the subject is extremely controversial. People are terrified of retribution from Microsoft. For that reason, I had to keep many, many sources confidential.

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SCHINDLER: It is clear that much of your evidence is documentary.
ROHM: Let me give you the full range of the thorough sourcing of this book. I have collected in the years of researching the book, scores of internal Microsoft documents, including detailed documents that itemized things that went on in meetings. Often these were secret communications between Gates and his top executives. Ninety percent of this material has never been published before and is still under seal by Microsoft and the government.

I feel this documentation doesn't need any editorializing on my part. It shows itself to be what it is. An inside view of the real strategies of Bill Gates and his top executives.

In addition to all those documents, I have conducted hundreds of interviews with Microsoft insiders, chairmen and CEOs of scores of American corporations who did business with Bill Gates, and people who were present in the scenes portrayed in my book. Usually, the scenes I recreate in the book are done so through standard journalistic practices.

Basically, every great work of non-fiction, including stories you read in the paper every day, are presented through the same methods. You talk to people who were involved, who were actually present, as many as you can. You talk to those who were close confidantes of those people involved. You get documents, if you can, supporting the events that took place. With all that information in front of you, you try to put together as accurate a picture of what went on as possible. Those are the methods used by Woodward and Bernstein, [and in] the great nonfiction business book Barbarians at the Gate, and those are the exact same methods I used to create this book.