Digital Common Sense

This showed up first in Business 2.0 on CNN Money

Microsoft exec jumps to Google

Another prominent Google-fighter leaves Redmond. This one concludes: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Owen Thomas, Business 2.0 Magazine online editor

June 29 2006: 10:07 AM EDT

SAN
FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) — It hasn’t been a good month for Microsoft’s
Google-fighters. So bad that one left abruptly last week, and another
decided this week to switch teams.

Vic Gundotra, a general
manager for platform evangelism at Microsoft and a 15-year employee,
has agreed to join Google after first spending a year working on
charitable endeavors, Business 2.0 has learned.

“Mr. Gundotra has resigned from Microsoft (Charts) and entered into an agreement with Google,” Google (Charts)
spokesman Steve Langdon wrote in an emailed statement. “He will not be
a Google employee for one year and intends to spend that time on
philanthropic pursuits. We are uncertain what precise role he will play
when he begins working for Google, but he has a broad range of skills
and experience which we believe will be valuable to Google.”

Here in Washington, it got followed up in theSeatte PI too

Microsoft evangelist going to Google

One of the key people responsible for
promoting Microsoft’s Windows and .Net technologies to software
developers is leaving the company, and going to Google. A Google
spokesman confirmed this morning that Vic Gundotra, Microsoft general
manager of platform evangelism, will join the search company.

And Scoble himself weighs in with his own thoughts

Wow, Vic Gundotra leaves Microsoft for Google

Interesting, Vic Gundotra leaves Microsoft, Business 2.0 says, to take a year off and then head to Google.

Vic is the guy who hired me into Microsoft and is one of the people
who made me believe. I will never forget his pitch to me to join
Microsoft: “this might be good for your career.”

Does this signal anything more than natural changes? Probably not, but certainly the whole “evangelist” mentality at Microsoft has taken a big hit.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft

Filed by Ken at 8:52 am under Technology