I was a senior developer at Microsoft for 3½ years and then made one of the biggest mistakes of my career; leaving to go work elsewhere. While working for several different companies (and in working closely with numerous others), I discovered a few things:

Yes, as the present trial is revealing, Microsoft is willing to do almost anything to ensure that they succeed. But many other companies are similarly willing to do almost anything and they don’t succeed. Microsoft has not become successful because of ethically questionable activities, rather because of their highly-effective management practices.

And yes, Microsoft was lucky when they were able to sell DOS to IBM, giving them a strong revenue stream. However, most of Microsoft’s success has come since DOS, where they have had to compete against numerous other companies.

You can’t really understand Microsoft unless you work there. The corporate culture and work environment are just too different. How can the average Russian truly understand and implement capitalism? They just can’t - it’s too big of a chasm to cross. By the same token, most business people, when they look at Microsoft, don’t know what to look for. And therefore they cannot understand the advantages, and gigantic advantages they are, that Microsoft holds.

The core advantage is that Microsoft’s system of management is light years beyond that found at most other companies.

And that is what led to this book, "The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management." I wrote it to explain Microsoft’s business advantage. The advantage, and therefore the book, extends beyond management practices and explains the essentials of Microsoft’s unique corporate culture and environment. It explains what makes Microsoft uniquely Microsoft.

So why should you care? The bookstores are drowning in management books. What’s the value of one more book, albeit about the method behind the best managed company in the world?

First of all, this book directly addresses the core argument in the DOJ vs. Microsoft case. As this book shows, even if Microsoft did everything the DOJ wanted, Microsoft would still dominate against their competitors. Winning a consent decree will not change the basic fact that Microsoft is the fox easily devouring the chickens in the hen house.

Second, Microsoft will continue to enter and dominate new market after new market. And as they do that, they will come to control more and more of the strategic businesses in the United States. Anyone who follows Microsoft closely is very aware that they want to own not only the Internet itself, but most Internet commerce as well as banking and entertainment. And that is just the near future.

This book was also written in the hope that some other companies will learn enough of Microsoft’s secrets to be able to effectively compete against Microsoft. And maybe even beat Microsoft at times. Because the idea of banking only at Microsoft, shopping only at Microsoft, watching movies only from Microsoft, and generally living in a Microsoft world, does not thrill me. I vastly prefer choices and diversity.