Leaving Live
Frequent
RDN contributor Mary Jo Foley has the goods on yet another
high-profile defection from Microsoft's Live business unit. This time, the departee
is Danny Thorpe, formerly a senior program manager and architect in the Windows
Live Platform group. Thorpe is leaving to work with a startup called
Cooliris.
You can read Foley's blog posting
here.
As Foley recounts, Thorpe originally came to Microsoft in April 2006 by way
of Borland and Google and was one of the key minds behind the Borland Delphi
programming language. You can read Danny Thorpe's blog account here.
Thorpe's defection comes hot on the heels of a couple of other Live leavings.
Live Search's Erik Selberg left Microsoft for Amazon.com about a week and a
half ago (here's
Erik's blog post on his decision). A couple of days later, Windows Live's Bubba
Murarka let fly the news that he was leaving Microsoft to launch his own business.
Microsoft's Windows Live effort is hardly on the verge of collapse. But these
kinds of defections are interesting, given how quiet the company has been about
the evolution of Live as a development platform, which at one time was rumored
to be on track for the end of last year. What do you think? E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/08/2007