(FORTUNE Magazine) – By sheer coincidence, National Book Award winner Ron Chernow's biography of the leading industrialist of the Gilded Age, John D. Rockefeller, was published on the eve of the Justice Department's May 18 antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, the company founded and run by the leading industrialist of the Information Age, Bill Gates. To the author of The House of Morgan, The Warburgs, and now Titan (Random House, $30), the comparison is a natural one. FORTUNE's Linda Grant talked with Chernow at his Brooklyn Heights apartment about the striking parallels--as well as contrasts--between Rockefeller's and Gates' characters, companies, and quandaries.

Are there themes in the antitrust case against Microsoft that echo the government-ordered breakup of Standard Oil?

Usually an antitrust case that is filed indicates the failure of extended negotiations. Antitrust actions are a power the Justice Department keeps in reserve because cases are long, expensive, and hard to win. What happened to Microsoft seems to be what happened to Standard Oil--that is, the more uncompromising Standard Oil was, the tougher the response from the government. Over the past year you could see the concessions Microsoft had made were minor from the standpoint of Justice. Rather than mollifying Justice, the concessions only inflamed it.

This is a major case, and it may well define the rules of the Information Age just as the Standard Oil case defined the rules of the Industrial Age. But the antitrust problems are so much trickier now. In a way, the Microsoft case is old-fashioned antitrust applied to newfangled technology. It is old-fashioned in that it deals with the issue of tying by the dominant producer of one product. On the other hand, this entire question of whether the Internet browser constitutes a feature of the Windows operating system and is a brand-new product--or arguably a brand-new industry--is a metaphysical puzzle. I find it easy to argue either side of the case.

Was it a foregone conclusion that Standard Oil would bear the brunt of Teddy Roosevelt's wrath against trusts?

There was nothing automatic about it. He was directly involved in the case because he chose Standard Oil as the target for trustbusting after an all-night session at the White House. Justice and Roosevelt were looking at several trusts and were looking to make an example of one. What fascinated me was that some of the Standard Oil executives felt U.S. Steel had adopted a much more conciliatory approach to Justice and thus avoided prosecution.

Teddy Roosevelt was not hostile to trusts per se. He divided the world into good trusts, which provided lower prices and better quality, and bad trusts, which gouged consumers. He was looking for a notorious trust to prosecute, and Standard Oil in its negotiations with the Justice Department took a very defiant and confrontational approach even to sharing information. President Clinton--who has been more sympathetic to antitrust action than Reagan or Bush--oddly enough has kept his distance from the Microsoft case.

Antitrust is as much a matter of public opinion as it is of legal issues. Ida Tarbell began her famous muckraking series for McClure's Magazine. You had for the first time in history mass-media chains, run by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, with the will and resources to take on business. And there was a consumer revolt. Rockefeller's successor, John D. Archold, was conducting a war against Royal Dutch/Shell, forcing him to lower prices abroad, and he compensated by raising prices at home. The Rockefeller fortune was based on kerosene, and every home in the country had Standard Oil kerosene burning in the parlor.

How does the general attitude toward Rockefeller in his time compare with our attitude toward Bill Gates?

What is very striking is the animosity toward Gates among his rivals. It is equal to that Rockefeller generated. And it seems to be spreading to other businesses that are not at this moment rivals but see themselves as potential rivals. Certainly the press has turned hostile to Gates. The big difference is that Gates remains extraordinarily popular among consumers and the general public. Something like two-thirds of those polled think the government should leave him alone. When the government brought the antitrust case against Standard Oil, it felt public opinion was behind it, whereas a weakness from a political standpoint of the Justice Department case is that it seems as though frightened businessmen are using Washington to keep Bill Gates at bay. This has been a popular consumer product and has a favorable image. Yet the majority of American homes don't yet have computers. About 50% of the American people are looking on this battle--which to you and me seems very far-reaching--like events on the planet Mars.

The vision and uncompromising principles that drive entrepreneurial businessmen like Rockefeller and Gates make it nearly impossible for them to engage in political compromise. A personality makeover is probably unlikely. Bill Gates, whose nature has served him very well throughout his career, is not interested, and he's possibly not capable of the flexibility to compromise.

The Gilded Age spawned billionaires or their equivalent, and we are again creating them in abundance. Why is this happening?

There are striking parallels between the late 19th and late 20th centuries. You have an extraordinary number of new industries created by technological innovation. Whenever this happens, people roll up gigantic fortunes, which forces government to redefine the nature of business and government. It creates tensions between the haves and have-nots. It calls into question the legitimacy of wealth and the functioning of the systems. In the late 19th century the great fortunes polarized the public. Society seemed split between the classes and the masses. Today we don't see that polarization; in fact, we are living through a period that glorifies business heroes. The difference is that today many are investing in the stock market and identify their self-interest with that of entrepreneurs like Bill Gates. Instead of feeling threatened, they feel their fortunes have been advanced.

John D. Rockefeller was a charitable giver on an immense scale. What inspired that?

Rockefeller, who was considered quite ruthless, was in fact infinitely more charitable than anyone on the scene today. Young high-tech wizards, whom we see as so benign, are not. This goes back to Rockefeller's religion. He felt he had a God-given duty to earn as much money as he could and to give away as much as he could. As an impoverished teenager, he was already tithing. It's interesting that his only nervous breakdown came from trying to administer his charities out of his hip pocket. It's hard for me to communicate how large and complicated Standard Oil was, but he seemed to move through the business day with remarkable equanimity. He was as good and as bad a man as ever lived. Perhaps being so stridently attacked for his business practices, he was especially conscientious in seeing that the money was spent wisely.