Silenced by Microsoft?

by Brett Glass.

Many in the computer industry wondered what happened when my InfoWorld column, titled Help Desk, was abruptly dropped by the magazine in February of 1998.

At the time, I was asked whether this unexpected move (my column was among InfoWorld's most popular) was due to pressure by Microsoft. My answer: I had no hard evidence, but it certainly could have been. At Dave's behest, I'm writing the story here -- the first time it has appeared anywhere -- so that folks can form their own opinions based on the (admittedly) incomplete information I have at my disposal. (If there's anyone out there from Microsoft or InfoWorld who knows more, I'd be interested in hearing from them.)

Let's begin at the beginning.

I penned my first question and answer column for InfoWorld in 1990. Originally called "Answer Line," the weekly column quickly grew in popularity until it was consistently rated the second or third most popular of the many that appeared in the magazine. I had the pleasure of helping readers with many perplexing problems, exploring and exposing consumer issues, and explaining sometimes- puzzling new technology. It was great fun -- especially the ongoing dialogue with readers. I would have been glad to continue it indefinitely, and would probably be penning it to this day were it not for the events that I describe here.

As the Web became an increasingly important medium for communications, InfoWorld went online. The site, InfoWorld Electric, included much of the content of the magazine as well as interactive online forums. The software was crufty, and the site was -- at least at first -- held together with spit, glue, and some very primitive Perl scripts. (I offered to help re-engineer it, but alas, the IT "priesthood" at the magazine would have none of this.) Nonetheless, it mostly worked, thanks mainly to valiant efforts by several overworked, unappreciated employees who rescued the databases when the forum software crashed. Questions for the column began to come in more frequently via e-mail and less frequently via the voice mailbox which InfoWorld had set up for me on its PBX.

Another trend I noticed was that more and more of the questions I was answering related to bugs or deficiencies in Microsoft software. While I encouraged readers to submit questions about hardware, networking, and other aspects of computing in the enterprise, fewer and fewer were coming. Readers' daily travails revolved overwhelmingly around bugs in Windows. I struggled to provide as much balance as I could, but also recognized that it was my duty to help readers with problems that mattered to them. And these problems were, increasingly, the result of my readers being tied to Windows and Microsoft applications, with fewer and fewer viable alternatives. While the fact that I exposed so many problems with its operating environments and applications may have rankled Microsoft, I trusted the "Chinese wall" that journalistic ethics require to allow me to write what would most help my readers. I did my best to answer the questions that were of most interest, and received much positive feedback.

In the fall of 1997, I at last convinced InfoWorld's staff to allow me to do something I'd been asking to try for two years: to host some online discussions on InfoWorld Electric. (I'd been a BBS and online forum moderator for many years, and so had plenty of experience with such things.) One of the first topics I picked was specifically intended to be controversial: Were Microsoft's release of the free Internet Explorer, DoubleSpace, EMM386, and similar products -- all of which had driven competitors out of business -- anti-competitive?

I was very interested in hearing what readers had to say about this topic, after seeing the strong trend in the questions I was receiving for my column.

I was also interested for another reason. Since the early 1990s, I had found that when I'd stated my opinion on the subject (to wit, that Microsoft had stepped over the line, was violating antitrust law, and should be reined in) in online forums, others had rejected my warnings -- mostly on the grounds that they feared "government regulation" even more than they feared Microsoft. Did they still feel this way? I was curious.

Within an hour of the time the forum went live, it was clear that Microsoft's utter dominance of an increasingly large number of markets had turned the tide of public opinion. The wave of comments supporting the view that Microsoft was a monopolist came so fast and furious that I could barely keep up with them. I had, apparently, tapped a great well of resentment against the software behemoth. The forum set records for the most postings both in a week and also overall.

A week later -- as if I'd timed the forum to coincide with it -- the DoJ announced its contempt case against Microsoft. [Note: This is not the case in which Judge Jackson was partially reversed in June of 2001, but rather the earlier case -- heard by the same judge -- in which Microsoft was accused of violating a 1995 consent decree limiting its anti-competitive behavior.]

I followed the trial with interest, and was shocked both by Microsoft's cavalier attitude and by the deceptive nature of its testimony in court. In particular, I was amazed and appalled when Microsoft, having been ordered by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to produce a version of Windows without Internet Explorer, delivered a version of the product that simply would not run! According to Microsoft executive Brad Chase, if one removed a list of files that it claimed to be parts of Internet Explorer from Windows, the system would not run! Therefore, said Chase, IE was an inseparable part of Windows.

As a technologist and journalist who understood what was actually going on and firmly believed that one should not lie in Federal court, I felt compelled to respond. Taking the list of files that Microsoft had deleted from Windows in the process of "removing" IE, I went to Microsoft's Web site and looked up each in turn. Amazingly, evidence to contradict Microsoft's claims was readily available on its own Web site. Some of the files in question were documented to be part of Windows, not IE; others were not part of either but were parts of other Microsoft products, including development tools. I published the results of this research on a popular Internet mailing list and also in one of the InfoWorld forums.

I also took issue with Chase's comments in another forum. Chase, appearing on Ira Flatow's "Science Fridays" segment of the NPR "Talk of the Nation" show, claimed that the daunting error message produced by some beta versions of Windows when it ran on DR-DOS was an "urban legend." I, having seen the message personally, called in to state that Microsoft's shenanigans were undeniably real. (I later proved the existence of the message in a more dramatic way: I produced a program that stimulated the shipping version of Windows 3.1 to display it. To prove that the message was in Windows rather than in my own code, I published the assembly language source of the DOS "TSR" program under the BSD License.)

None of these actions were part of an anti-Microsoft "jihaad," by the way. As a journalist and technologist, I simply felt very strongly -- and still do -- that the public should know the truth, and that companies, like people, have an obligation to play fair and not to lie in court.

Finally, toward the end of the year, I wrote a letter directly to Bill Gates, via his publicist, urging him to fire the executives who were lying in court and to allow others to enjoy success in the software business now that he himself was the richest man on the planet.

Given that I was a very well-known columnist, I had every reason to believe that he would read it.

After I sent the letter (just before Christmas week), I thought that I might hear something from Microsoft -- perhaps even from Gates personally. But instead, shortly after the new year, I received a call from InfoWorld.

It was Sandy Reed, InfoWorld's Editor-In-Chief, and Rachel Parker, InfoWorld's Columns Editor, calling to tell me that my column was being terminated.

Needless to say, I asked why. (The column was still extremely popular with readers, so it didn't seem to be in the magazine's interest to do such a thing.)

"I... I just can't work with you anymore," said Ms. Parker, sounding upset.

I was stunned. In the past, Ms. Parker had always acted very professionally.... She was absolutely not the sort of person who one would expect to let personal issues get in the way of her job.

The two then told me that, while my column would cease immediately, InfoWorld would continue to pay me -- for UP TO SIX MONTHS -- until I found another venue in which to write. This surprised me as well, since I was a contractor rather than an employee. In retrospect, it seemed to me to be either an expression of guilt and/or a form of "hush money" to persuade me not to make waves about the dismissal. (What I wanted, of course, was not the money but to keep writing.)

To the public, Sandy said that the termination of my column was the result of a change of editorial direction.

Yet, ironically, Help Desk was replaced not with something radically different but by another Q&A column.... One that never became as popular. The new column focused almost exclusively on Microsoft products, and rarely, if ever, pointed out a deficiency or explained how to deal with the bugs and security holes that so frustrated my readers.

Three other things, other than my dismissal's proximity to the events mentioned above, also made me wonder whether Microsoft was involved in my dismissal.

First, Ms. Parker announced a very short time later that she was leaving InfoWorld and moving to London. This raises some suspicion about her assertion that she could not work with me.... As a seasoned professional, could she absolutely not hang on and edit my columns -- or delegate their editing to someone else -- for that short time?

Second, I later heard from an InfoWorld employee (no longer with the company) that she had, during approximately the same period, been pressured to change a negative review of a Microsoft product. While this is, of course, hearsay, it does suggest that InfoWorld may have been subject to undue influence from Microsoft, which was by far its largest advertiser.

Finally, Larry Magid, another industry columnist, also lost a column in a magazine whose largest advertiser was Microsoft immediately after taking part in an "Appraising Microsoft" conference in Washington, DC. While, again, there was no blatant evidence that Microsoft was causing columnists who criticized it to be dismissed, it did seem to be a rather striking coincidence. (Larry's a very good and thoughtful writer, and one would have expected any magazine to want to keep him.)

After my column was terminated, I debated whether to sue so as to determine, via discovery, whether Microsoft was involved in my dismissal.

This internal debate lasted approximately one nanosecond. Even if I'd had the financial resources to sue the world's richest company, across state lines, for interference with contract, evidence of such activity would be easy to conceal. A Microsoft exec might just -- as Dave suggests -- have mentioned in passing that their next big, expensive advertising campaign would be more, er, effective if Brett Glass weren't there. Nice and clean; no paper trail.

In any event, I moved on. I tried publishing a Webzine for awhile (learning, quite quickly, that "pure content" plays don't work), have written plenty of other columns (though none as influential), have done more programming, and have designed a lot of hardware. But I still miss doing that InfoWorld column -- and especially the fantastic interactions I had with readers.

Upon reflection, though, I think it's better than even money that Microsoft was involved in bringing that wonderful era to an end. What do you think?